Private Finance Initiatives

Lord Dormand of Easington: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What consultations they have had with the Audit Commission on the private finance initiatives.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the Government meet routinely and regularly with the Audit Commission to ensure value for money in public procurement.

Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that there have been some spectacular failures in the early workings of PFI in public sector works? There has been some improvement. But does he accept the recommendation in the recently published National Audit Office report on PFI construction performance that statistics should be regularly updated to show whether PFI projects have been delivered on time and at the expected cost?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Dormand, used the word "early" in his question. Publicity in recent weeks and today about the Audit Commission report on PFI in schools is very much about the early experience. To be fair to the Audit Commission, it says so on the front page, although one could not tell that from the press comments. The PFI report covers eight PFI and 10 traditional projects from 1996 to 1998. Since then, there have been 550 school projects with PFI. That does not tell us a great deal that can usefully be learnt about PFI in schools at the moment. But the noble Lord is right that the Audit Commission recommends that we undertake retrospective evaluation of PFI. We have been doing that—in particular, the National Audit Office has been doing that.

Lord Newby: My Lords, the Minister is right in saying that the report deals with the first tranche of PFIs for schools. But it is a damning report. Among other things, it says that it is time to rethink how value for money is assessed by putting in place a more transparent, wider test of likely value for money. Do the Government intend to conduct such a review?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, that is exactly why I referred to the much more recent report by the National Audit Office, which was published on 5th February this year. It relates to all the completed studies by July 2002 and concludes that 81 per cent of them were thought to be satisfactory, or better, value for money. Of course we must continue and extend evaluation of the private finance initiative.

Lord Saatchi: My Lords, will the Minister be offended if I suggest to him that the private finance initiative is being expanded because it provides a very useful device by which the Government can hide the true extent of government debt? Is not the Government's motive for doing that that public borrowing is out of control, and, as a result, the budget deficit is too high? Does he accept that, if the Government do not stop this elaborate cover-up of the true extent of national debt, the result will be a report such as this one, which I shall read:
	"The Government's programme for the repayment of hidden debts has been postponed. The hidden debts arose from clever Government manoeuvres in previous years to borrow money through special off-balance-sheet accounts. The Government's aim was to conceal the effects of sharply rising budget deficits, stemming from slumping tax revenues and ballooning social expenditures".
	That was a report following an announcement made on Friday afternoon in Tokyo by the Government of Japan.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am never offended by anything that the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, says. He is just wrong. It is simply not the case that the motivation for the private finance initiative is to take anything off the balance sheet. We have no incentive to do so; we have no desire to do so; we would not be able to do so even if we wanted to, because when departments decide whether to put something on the balance sheet or off it, they use Accounting Standards Board rules. The National Audit Office can qualify the accounts if it thinks that that is misleading. As far as I know—I have not gone back to all departments—there have been no occasions on which the National Audit Office has qualified departmental accounts on that basis.

Lord Marsh: My Lords, does the Minister not agree that, whatever the Government's intention, the effect of PFI agreements is to take them off the Treasury balance sheet? All governments take advantage of that. But, on the good side, if that were not possible, given how treasuries always behave, many good projects would not take place.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I certainly agree with the noble Lord's last remarks. When he was in government we had cash accounting. When you added one pound of capital to one pound of revenue to make two pounds, the incentive to under-spend on capital or to under-invest in capital was great. With resource accounting, there is no longer that incentive or an incentive to take anything off the balance sheet. It is no skin off our nose if the proper accounting authorities decide that something should be taken off the balance sheet. We gain no advantage from it.

Lord Barnett: My Lords, does my noble friend accept that, when he talks about the early days of the PFI, he means the early 1990s? If all the money borrowed through PFI were borrowed by the Treasury directly, which can usually borrow more cheaply than most of us, would not the total borrowing, instead of being off the balance sheet, still be inside the Chancellor's golden rule?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am nervous about contradicting the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, of all people, but no, the borrowing under PFI is undertaken by the people who are contracted to carry out the PFI. It has been reported recently that the Croydon Tramlink PFI project is in trouble. In fact, it is covering its operating costs and is in no danger, but the shareholders are taking the risk and have suffered from taking the risk. That is what risk transfer means.

Viscount Falkland: My Lords, does the Minister have anything to tell the House about the PFI as it has been applied to the acquisition and maintenance of vehicles for the Metropolitan Police?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: No, my Lords. I know a lot about individual PFIs, but not about every single one. I apologise. I shall write to the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland. There is always somebody who can come up with something of that sort.

Asylum Seekers

Lord Campbell of Alloway: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether, in the light of the terrorist threat, they have any plans to suspend the United Kingdom's obligations relating to asylum and the European Convention on Human Rights and to introduce general measures of safeguard.

Lord Filkin: My Lords, we have no current plans to withdraw from our international obligations relating to asylum or the ECHR. However, we should not be afraid to review relevant international obligations if current measures to tackle asylum are not effective. We have already introduced a power to deal with suspected terrorists. The United Kingdom has derogated from Article 5 of the ECHR, which allows us to detain foreign nationals who are suspected of international terrorism of the sort that resulted in the events of September 11th and who threaten national security but cannot be deported.

Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his reply. While the threat of terrorist attack from those within the realm remains, ought not the Government to consider suspension of international obligations that inhibit measures of safeguard and afford cover on entry for those who enter for that very purpose? Ought not the Government to consider the imposition of some fair share limitation on those who seek asylum and others who seek leave to enter, with provisions for detention pending security clearance and powers of removal?

Lord Filkin: My Lords, on the first question, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 dealt in very large measure with the problems of ECHR Article 3. As the House may know, 13 people are currently held under that power. I cannot off the top of my head think of other immediate changes to legislation that are necessary in that respect to deal with the terrorist threats that are facing this country. However, we are aware of the seriousness of those threats, and therefore we shall keep such matters under constant review, as we keep operational matters under review. It is wrong to assume that if there were no asylum seekers coming to this country, there would be no terrorist threat. Clearly, some terrorists may use asylum as a cover to enter this country, but there are plenty of other mechanisms by which they could get into this country even if there were no Geneva Convention and no asylum routes. We have to maintain a sense of proportion while keeping a vigorous vigilance about how to combat terrorist threats.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, is the Minister aware that it was a Conservative government, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, took the commendable step of reinforcing the prohibition against torture in the European Convention on Human Rights by ratifying without reservation the Convention Against Torture, Article 7 of which expressly forbids sending anyone, whether an asylum seeker or a suspected terrorist, to another country where they will face torture? Does he agree that it is curiously inconsistent for that party now to be clamouring for the repudiation of international obligations that they freely undertook?

Lord Filkin: My Lords, it is extremely novel to be invited by a Liberal Democrat to congratulate the Official Opposition, but on this occasion I have pleasure in agreeing with the noble Lord.

Lord Dholakia: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the present UN convention relating to the status of refugees—in particular Article 1F(a) and 1F(c)—is explicit that third country nationals who are a threat to our country internally or who are involved in action contrary to the principles of the UN can be excluded from the convention? In the light of that, does he accept that there is no need to suspend the European convention because of terrorist threats? In addition, the Minister rightly spelt out the provision of existing anti-terrorism legislation.

Lord Filkin: My Lords, the noble Lord is right. As he will know better than many, we also looked at these issues as part of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill. We wanted to ensure that we had robust legislation to enable the Home Secretary, in tightly defined circumstances, to remove people when they were clearly not afforded the protection of the 1951 Geneva Convention in the terms that he describes.

Women Directors

Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What action they propose to take in response to the low numbers of women who are directors of British public limited companies.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, we have welcomed Derek Higgs's proposals on how to widen the pool from which non-executive directors are drawn, which could bring more women into the boardroom. Derek Higgs made proposals for a more rigorous, fair and open appointment process. Subject to consultation on the detailed wording, the Financial Reporting Council intends to put the changes to the combined code into effect on 1st July. A small group of business leaders and others, led by Professor Laura Tyson of the London Business School, is also being set up to bring to greater prominence candidates, including women, from the non-commercial sector.

Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. I admire the Government's efforts in this respect. The total of 38 per cent of women appointed to public bodies in the past year is highly gratifying when compared to the 6 per cent of non-executive directors and the low number of directors of FTSE leading companies. However, does the Minister agree that a policy of collaboration, mutual discussion, instructions as to methodology and so on, has not gone very far in convincing the private sector that it needs to pull its socks up in respect of equal treatment of employees? Are the Government considering legislation to provide a general duty on employers for fair treatment of all their employees?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, what is taking place is more substantial than the noble Baroness implies. Written into the proposed combined code is a clear procedure for the appointment of non-executives, which will put it on a much more meritocratic basis and therefore bring in many more women.

Baroness Lockwood: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the appointment of women directors comes within the scope of the positive provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act 1986? Could a statutory code of practice be introduced to provide methods by which women, and members of other groups who are discriminated against, might be dealt with in the whole area of promotion?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, the question of how the Sex Discrimination Act 1986 applies to directors is complicated, due to the fact that they are office holders, which creates certain difficulties. However, the combined code has a strong implication that requires companies to report if they do not follow the lines laid out.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, given that many women have to take some years off to bring up children, will the experience gained during that time be taken into account? Many women are disadvantaged in qualifying to be non-executive directors if that period is ignored, or if it is not taken into account as it should be—that is, favourably.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, the Higgs report made clear that the skills required of non-executive directors should be considered carefully. That would probably lead to a wider range of experience than hitherto when appointments have been made on the basis of personal contacts, reinforcing the tendency that the people selected have the same background as those making the appointment. Having that fair process and a clear specification of requirements will open up the range of people who can take on those appointments.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, I welcome the news that a group of business leaders is to be set up to consider the required skills, perhaps mainly from the non-commercial sector. Has the Minister noticed a particular disparity in the fact that only 6 per cent of main board directors of the FTSE 100 are women, although the proportion of women managers in the sector is five times as high, at 30 per cent? Do the Government have plans to publicise the large pool of neglected talent, which could, if properly used, enormously improve the diversity and mix of experience among non-executive directors?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, the whole purpose of Professor Laura Tyson's exercise is to bring to the attention of directors people who could fill the positions but who come from the non-commercial sector where there is a much higher proportion of senior women.

Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I declare an interest as a founder chairman of the Women into Public Life campaign, from which no one can assume that I am in any way less than helpful to women. I am. Does the Minister agree that political correctness, if taken to an extreme in this sort of area, is not right? Businesses and large companies, in a competitive world, need the very best experience and expertise on their boards. The idea that gender is one of the things that a director will automatically consider is not good. I accept all that the Minister said about the report, but does he agree that in small and medium-sized businesses many more women are achieving managerial status? Indeed, they are often developing their own businesses into large businesses. Would that not be the proper pool, with the right experience, for those concerned to consider?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, it is not a question of political correctness but of having a proper procedure for a board that opens it up, on a meritocratic basis, to those most suitable to do the job. That will bring in a large number of women, because there is a large pool of women in the non-commercial and commercial sectors who could do the job well and be of great value to the board.

Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: My Lords, I agree with the Minister that this is a matter not of political correctness but of commercial prudence. Is he aware that there has never been a woman executive director of any of the big five British clearing banks? They have tens of millions of women customers, over 100,000 women employees and 36 male executive directors. Does the Minister, with his considerable commercial experience, believe that that is good commercial practice on their part? Does he agree that it resembles not so much a glass ceiling as a door permanently padlocked against women?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, as the Higgs report pointed out, there are good reasons for having diversity on the board. It has importance in terms of meritocracy throughout the company. The composition of the board sends important signals throughout the company about values and commitment to diversity and equal opportunities. Those principles apply as much to banks as to any other companies.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I am of course absolutely behind what the Government are trying to achieve. However, have they figures to show how many women have been invited to be non-executive directors of public companies but have refused because they did not want to do it? Those figures might be quite enlightening.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I am absolutely certain we have not got them, and I cannot see any conceivable way of collecting such information. Going around asking people whether they have been approached and have turned down a job is not an easy thing to do.

Lord Boston of Faversham: My Lords, does the Minister agree that all that public limited companies need to do to improve proportions is to follow the splendid example set over many years by your Lordships' House? The system for which your Lordships voted overwhelmingly last week provides a simple way to further enhance the position of women, to the benefit of your Lordships' House, Parliament and the nation?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I am not absolutely convinced that any of the permutations would necessarily produce the results for which we are aiming in the boardrooms of companies.

Asylum Applications

Lord Brougham and Vaux: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	By what means the number of asylum applications is to be reduced by half by September.

Lord Filkin: My Lords, we have put in place a comprehensive and radical reform package set out in the White Paper and legislated for in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act. These measures are complemented by our achievements in securing the Channel Tunnel, closing the Sangatte camp and moving immigration controls to the French coast.
	All those measures, and others that we have announced recently, are now starting to take effect, and we are monitoring closely their cumulative impact to build over the coming months. We will continue to review whether further measures are needed to produce the reduction in asylum applications that we are seeking.

Lord Brougham and Vaux: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. Can he confirm that, last year, about 82,000 asylum seekers who were granted refugee status simply disappeared from view? Can he tell us how many of those were unaccompanied children? Does the Home Secretary agree with the Prime Minister's statement that the goal of reducing asylum applications by half by September is achievable?

Lord Filkin: My Lords, that was three questions in one hit. It is certainly not the case that 82,000 asylum seekers disappeared last year. From recollection—although I shall check and write to the noble Lord—something of that order applied, but that number did not disappear. The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister are absolutely at one with regard to our goals for reducing the number of asylum applications. They could not be clearer or more committed to seeking by any proper means to reduce the numbers applying to one half by September. We are straining every sinew in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate to achieve that goal. I should be delighted, if required, to set out the mechanisms by which we are doing that.

Lord Hylton: My Lords, can the Minister give us any good news as to progress on reducing the applications backlog and on improving the quality of first decisions—two subjects which we discussed at length during passage of the recent Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill?

Lord Filkin: My Lords, the progress which is most impressive is the increasing speed with which initial decisions on new applications are being made. For good reason, the central focus is on that. We are seeking to deal with the initial application of those coming into the country by whatever means and making an asylum claim, and to give them an initial determination within two months at the maximum. When I last looked at the figures, well over 75 per cent of all such cases were given an initial decision within two months. The speed of appeals has also been improving significantly as resources have been strengthened in the immigration appeal authority. It is crucial to deal rapidly with applications so that those found not to have a valid claim can be removed at the earliest opportunity.

Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord is going to refer at all to the target of reducing applications by one half to which my noble friend's original Question refers.

Lord Filkin: My Lords, this is the second time in two weeks that I thought I had answered a question but the answer appears not to have been heard. I made it absolutely clear that both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are at one in seeking to achieve that goal.
	I take this opportunity to set out in more detail what we are doing to achieve the goal. First, we are looking at a whole range of measures to harden entry. The Channel port of Calais has now been hardened so that it is much more difficult for clandestines to enter. Since December 2002, we have had the capability for 100 per cent freight screening at Calais. From April 2003, we are putting heartbeat-detection equipment at other high-risk ports. From May 2003, we will put heartbeat-detection at medium-risk ports. From February 2003, we will have Passive Millimetric Wave Imager—would you believe it—rolled out at high-risk ports. Consequently, we are already seeing a significant reduction in the number of clandestines found at Dover. We have also signed a memorandum of undertaking with the Belgian authorities to strengthen entry controls at the Belgian ports. We are in early discussions with the Dutch about implementing a similar process. We have put in place a whole range of measures to reduce the attractiveness of this country, including providing for the fast-track removal of those with no valid claim who have come from a safe authority.
	I apologise to the House for the length of that answer, but I thought it important to put those matters on the record.

Lord Waddington: My Lords, does not the Minister realise that he has still ducked the Question? Do the Government still aim to reduce the number of asylum applications by half by September?

Lord Filkin: My Lords, I must be weak on understanding semantics. Yes.

Lord Rotherwick: My Lords, does the noble Lord expect that some of these asylum applications will end up as work permits? How many more work permits does he expect to be issued in the coming year?

Lord Filkin: My Lords, any asylum seeker coming in will not qualify for a work permit. If he were found to be qualified as an asylum seeker and was granted the right of entry—in other words, ELR and ILR—he would have the right to work. Others, such as those from Poland or other accession countries, would be able to enter from accession. Others, on seasonal migration work, would be able to get work permits. There would be no point in their applying for asylum if they got here under work permit mechanisms to get work.

Baroness Blatch: My Lords, does the Minister accept that the degree of scepticism around the Chamber derives from the fact that the Home Secretary is uncertain about whether the goal can be achieved whereas the Prime Minister has pledged that it will be achieved? Will the Minister give the House an assurance today that there will be no redefinition of "asylum seeking", as there was when Sangatte was closed and asylum seekers were no longer asylum seekers but were simply given permits to work in this country?

Lord Filkin: My Lords, I think that our record on not changing definitions or statistics to massage the result is good and clean and bears comparison with any other government on whom I would care to reflect. As for the position between the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, I am not being obtuse. I do not think that the position could be clearer. Reaching the target of a reduction by one half by September will be challenging, but there is a commitment by both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to do everything we possibly can to get there, and so there should be.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, I should declare an interest since my wife is an immigration and asylum adjudicator. However, I speak for myself rather than what she tells me about her experience. Does the Minister agree that two practical issues need to be addressed in addition to attempts to control the quantity of asylum seekers as he has indicated? First, as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said, is it not important not only that there be speedy initial interviews and determinations, but that those interviews are of the highest quality so that one does not simply pass the problem up the chain to the appeals system? Secondly, when an adjudicator has made what are often difficult, life and death decisions, is it not also important that those who fail as asylum seekers really are removed from the country?

Lord Filkin: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lester, on those points. I regret that I did not answer the second question from the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. He is also right that the quality of initial decisions is absolutely crucial. That is one of the issues that IND has in its work programme to strengthen—as we said when we discussed the Bill—the quality of those initial decisions. These issues will interconnect if we are to succeed, as we intend to do, in very substantially reducing the numbers. It allows the organisation more capacity to manage its processes and to get on top of them, which is very much to be desired. That would include, as the noble Lord, Lord Lester, signals, much greater success in removing those with no right to remain here. We are making progress in this respect. The numbers are significantly higher this year, but we want to go much further. That is essential for deterrence.

Iraq: Weapons Dossier

Lord Astor of Hever: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What were the sources of the dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction issued on 3rd February.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the document contains important background information about Saddam Hussein's regime. The first section, describing the extreme lengths to which the Iraqi regime is going to hide weapons and obstruct the inspectors, is based largely on intelligence material. The second section, about how the regime is structured, is based on a number of sources including work by Dr Ibrahim al-Marashi. The third section, which describes the impact of the regime on the Iraqi people, is based largely on intelligence. The information in the document, which was placed in the Library of the House on 3rd February, is accurate.

Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, as the Government have been unmasked passing off an out-of-date PhD thesis as their own intelligence, will the Minister agree that the truth and their credibility have become the first casualty of war? Can she confirm that the second casualty will be the Prime Minister's press secretary?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I could not disagree more. I draw the noble Lord's attention to the opening comment in the document, which states:
	"This report is based upon a number of sources including intelligence material".
	It is absolutely clear that sources other than intelligence were used. The noble Lord went on to say that the information was out of date. The information from Dr Ibrahim al-Marashi has been confirmed by him as being up to date and, indeed, was revised by him in September last year. The noble Lord may also be interested to know that Dr al-Marashi is a lecturer at the US Naval Postgraduate School, a research associate at the Centre for Non-Proliferation Studies, has worked at Harvard University on a project classifying captured Iraqi documents and has served in the US consulate in Jedda. I believe that he probably knows a thing or two.

Lord Merlyn-Rees: My Lords, may I appeal to my noble friend not to supply information on sources from within Iraq as that would put at risk the lives of many brave men and women?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, my noble friend raises a very important point. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister acknowledged in answering a PMQ today that some of the information was based on work by Dr al-Marashi which, as has been made clear, in retrospect we should have acknowledged. But I also point out that it is always difficult to decide what provenance ought to be published. By publishing the provenance of parts of any sensitive document, inferences might be drawn about the rest. On this occasion we made it clear that in retrospect we should have said what the source was. The source was entirely respectable and the information is accurate. I urge your Lordships instead of engaging in some of the press frenzy about the provenance of the document, to read the document itself. It makes very, very compelling reading.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, the Minister makes an impressive defence, as she usually does, but does she not agree that one of the absolutely crucial elements in this whole discussion about the grounds upon which there should be a military attack or other action taken against Iraq depends upon sustaining public trust in the information provided? The difficulty with that is that the standard required is even higher than it is in normal public utterance. Would it therefore on consideration not have been better to quote directly, naming the source where that was possible—I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, very much on board—and can we have the Minister's assurance that in future any further material that may be provided will indicate the sources where it possibly can as clearly as possible?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I hope that I have already made clear that it is not only my view but also the view of my right honourable friend that the source of this particular part of the document should have been published. I hope that all your Lordships will read the document. The part in question is a description of 13 security and intelligence organisations that operate in Iraq, as well as Saddam Hussein and his sons. I stress to your Lordships that Her Majesty's Government believe that the information in that part of the document is entirely accurate. Of course, where we can source information accurately without any damage to our intelligence, or, indeed, to those who may be called upon to fight in the interests of this country, we shall endeavour to do so.

Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, is it not irresponsible of members of the Opposition in both Houses to play fast and loose, as they have over recent days, on issues of intelligence when they know that the Government will never ever be able to answer in any detail?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, by way of answer I tell my noble friend that when I was in Egypt recently it was pointed out to me by a very senior member of the Egyptian Government that every time we have one of these exchanges it is brought to the attention of Saddam Hussein who, of course, is delighted to hear about any such problems over any information. He hears nothing that he does not want to hear but everything that will give him any shred of comfort is brought to his attention. We live in a free country. It is not irresponsible for proper questions to be raised but I ask noble Lords to put such questions into a proper context and look at the substance of the document and not, if I may say so, some of the spin that has been created around it.

Lord King of Bridgwater: My Lords, although I entirely understand the noble Baroness's responsibility to make the vigorous response that she did from the ministerial Bench, will she pay particular attention to what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said? We are in very dangerous times and the credibility of the Government at this present time was never more important. I read the document and I am impressed by much of its content. But much of it is the subject of claim and counter-claim. The question as to who is believed will depend on the credibility of the Government and the involvement of government PR representatives who I believe also worked on the document. The need to make clear that there is no spin involved but rather accurate and genuine intelligence was never more important than now.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I agree with every word that the noble Lord put before your Lordships. I reiterate that it is clear in the opening sentence of the document that it draws on material other than intelligence material. I could not agree more with what the noble Lord said and with what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said about the credibility of documents put out in the Government's name at the moment. I also point out to your Lordships, as I did in my opening reply, that the document does not seek to argue the case for military involvement. What it does seek to do is to lay out some of the background to Saddam Hussein's wretched regime.

Business of the House: Debates this Day

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the debates on the Motions in the names of the Lord Harrison and the Baroness Massey of Darwen set down for today shall each be limited to two-and-a-half hours.—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Corruption: Joint Committee

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That it is expedient that a Joint Committee of Lords and Commons be appointed to consider and report on any draft Corruption Bill presented to both Houses by a Minister of the Crown, and that the committee should report not later than four months after any such Bill has been presented to both Houses.—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)
	On Question, Motion agreed to; and a message was ordered to be sent to the Commons to seek their agreement thereto.

The Arts

Lord Harrison: rose to call attention to the part played by the arts in the cultural life of this country including the contribution made through free access to museums and art galleries; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, the Commons recent report, National Museums and Galleries: Funding and Free Admission reminds us that the UK's museums and galleries are,
	"a treasure trove of artistic, cultural, historical and scientific artefacts and expertise",
	and, above all,
	"fun and fascinating places to visit".
	For myself and my family and for millions of other Britons and visitors to our shores, that has always been the case. But we now bathe in the warm afterglow of the Government's wonderful initiative, completed in December 2001 and now requiring our praise and appraisal, on the abolition of charging at our national galleries and museums. That inspired move provoked a remarkable 70 per cent rise in visitor numbers in the first year of abolition. Particularly gratifying are the crowd-pulling percentages recorded at the V&A, 111 per cent; at the Science Museum, 100 per cent; and at the Natural History Museum, 81 per cent.
	I am personally thrilled by the 79 per cent increase in visitors to Merseyside's national museums, with the Liverpool Museum and the Museum of Liverpool Life topping the list. That is particularly heartening as those two excellent museums have always been the home from home of local Merseysiders. As word of mouth spreads the good news about the liberation of the people's palaces, I expect more local people, especially those drawn from social classes C, D and E, to frequent those museums with the same enthusiasm currently accorded to Anfield, Goodison Park and Prenton Park.
	In passing, we should note that a recent MORI poll suggests that the percentage of people visiting at least one museum in the past year has risen from 20 to 25 per cent for social classes D and E; from 28 to 39 per cent for C2s; and from 44 to 53 per cent for C1s. I dwell on those figures because some commentators have suggested that the recent rise in numbers is largely attributable to social groups A and B. My reading of the figures suggests that from a lower base, more C, D and Es than ever are coming into our free museums. Can my noble friend the Minister confirm that welcome trend? Will she say what more the Government can do to encourage the 41 per cent of respondents to the MORI poll who habitually eschew any visit to a museum?
	I expect other welcome consequences of abolition. Will the Minister confirm my instinct that increased flows through our galleries have generated a greater income take in museum shops and restaurants? Has she noticed greater enthusiasm among museum donors? Now that the assurance has been given that their gifts will be offered free to public gaze, do they give more readily?
	I also sense that the pattern of visiting museums is changing, especially among families, with more visits of shorter periods now that the imperative of getting one's full money's-worth from a single expensive visit has been eliminated. Too many such forced marches around cavernous museums have in the past put children off museums for life.
	Does the Minister agree that all those benefits have happened? Will she now elucidate what she thinks should be the desirable outcomes of the Government's progressive policy of remitting entrance fees? I press her on that, as we owe it to the dedicated men and women who run, curate and stand guard over Britain's stupendous heritage to be clear about the objectives of the new policy. I also ask my noble friend to confirm that the Government have their hand on the plough on free entry. Core funding for the museums must be guaranteed by the Government, preferably with extended budget horizons, to ward off the disastrous spectre of a return to charging.
	So far, everything has been to the good, but will the Government also recognise that the increase in visitor numbers has brought in its own whirligig of new challenges, some of which will require new money? With the absence of entrance tickets, how will the Government verify the count of visitor numbers, data that are so important for designing responsive policies for museums? Who will pay for the extra cleaners required, the repair of wear and tear on museum fabric, and the increased staffing that follows the opening of the floodgates on free admission? The Government have begun on a long and winding road, and they must see the journey through.
	The new policy has also had the effect of embarrassing some charging museums and galleries in the independent and local authority sectors, which cavil at what they deem to be unfair competition. Loss of income from school visits is a particularly sore point for some. What remedies can the Minister suggest to ensure that that is only a teething problem while the new policy beds down? Will she suggest greater links and joint ticketing between different museums, and more of the tab being picked up by local education authorities given that those non-national museums contribute so compellingly to school, student and lifelong learning?
	Will the Minister address herself to some of the odd anomalies of change? For instance, why is Tate Britain now free but not Tate St Ives? Why have university museums been excluded from the Chancellor's recent budgetary amendment, finessing the vexed problem of museums recovering VAT input? European Commission President Romano Prodi confirmed that there is no European impediment to solving that problem to the benefit of universities and their local communities.
	As a young boy born and brought up in Oxford, many a family Sunday afternoon began with a picnic in the Parks followed by a visit to the Pitt Rivers museum. Its exotic totem poles have haunted me all my life and christened me an inveterate museum-goer.
	It is not only finance and resources that will complete the Government's ambitions, although the £70 million announced for our regional museums is yet another welcome initiative from the DCMS. The Government rightly require recipients of increased government funding to modernise and reform. In particular, will they tackle the sometimes stifling culture of talented amateurism that can beset the running of British museums, leading to indifferent displays, poorly kept deposits and financial ineptitude? Will they review the lack of training and leadership programmes for running modern museums?
	What will the Government do to stimulate improved knowledge of our museums and their new regime of free entry? Is that yet well known among the populace? Such publicity should also clarify which museums, dubbed national or not, are subject to free entry, thereby reducing the awkward incidences of visitors arriving at charging museums in the mistaken belief that they are free.
	Above all, the quality of our museums, their accessibility to scholars, and the experience offered to the visitors alike must be subject to continual scrutiny by the Government. It would be folly of the first order to open the doors of our museums without a commensurate revitalising of their core collections by innovative curators, aided and abetted by dedicated staff.
	I also suggest to my noble friend that we must avoid the growth of a two-tier system in our museums, whereby visitors are charged for temporary exhibitions in free museums. Such discrimination can have a demotivating effect on visitors, especially newcomers to the museum experience.
	Will my noble friend ensure that the formulation of future policy recognises that national museums should cater for their local communities as well as for visitors and tourists? That should be as true for London as it is for Liverpool. Charity begins at home.
	There is still much to do in co-ordinating the Government's cross-cutting policies and exploiting the wonderful resource that our museums and galleries represent. Education has an obvious but still under-exploited relationship with museums. Schools and museums must do better, as must the tourism industry. It is a truism that foreign visitors come to Britain for the museums, not for the weather. However, our thinking in that regard is still too monolingual. For instance, do we publicise in our overseas literature the free entry to our national galleries, an acknowledged magnet to foreign tourists?
	Museums too can contribute to our national political debates, as instanced by the British Museum's excellent recent exhibitions on the heritage currencies of euroland, and the pound's development as a single currency. However, it is sad to report that, to my knowledge, of the London museums only the British Museum accepts euros in its shops. Our museums and galleries should also aid and abet the quality of British business and industry. After all, the V&A and the Birmingham Art Gallery were founded to help to impregnate British goods with the genius of British design.
	Could we take a leaf out of the book of British broadcasting? Some exhibitions in some of our museums could mimic "Antiques Roadshow", explaining artefacts in terms of use, provenance and—yes—price. We should always be prepared to appeal to avarice if it feeds other worthier instincts.
	There is much to be done to get full use of our museums and galleries in Britain today. I am proud to support a Government whose popular instincts have so vigorously thrown open the doors to our finest and best.
	I shall finish with a little anecdote. Last year, my wife and I visited the recently freed Lady Lever Art Gallery, located on the Wirral, which I used to have the pleasure of representing in the European Parliament. It was showing the Leonardo exhibition. The gallery can be found in Port Sunlight, which was created by the Lever brothers. Much emphasis was placed there on education: the museum was at the heart of that. We had great difficulty approaching the museum by car and had to park some distance away because of the crowds of people coming to see the exhibition and to take advantage of free entry. After our very enjoyable visit, we repaired to the one pub that was allowed at Port Sunlight and found it empty. I said to my wife, "What a wonderful Government we have—emptying the pubs and filling the museums!". My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

Baroness Rendell of Babergh: My Lords, I would like to thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for inaugurating this debate and for his thoughtful and interesting opening remarks.
	This topic is too seldom discussed in your Lordships' House. To me, "cultural life" is synonymous with an appreciation of "the arts", not of art alone. The Chambers Dictionary has "the arts" among its several definitions of "culture" and defines "cultural" as,
	"educated, especially in the arts and humanities".
	It is about the arts in general and not only of museums that I shall speak.
	British life has for a thousand years been richly informed by the arts and, I would suggest, in spite of evidence repeatedly thrust at us through the media, more now than it has ever been. That is particularly true of contributions made by literature, the theatre and other performing arts, and our museums. More literary prizes than ever before are being awarded and the publicity attendant on short lists and ceremonies ensures media attention through which the public are thoroughly informed of such phenomena as the recent vying between the husband and wife, Michael Frayn and Clare Tomalin, for the Whitbread Prize, with their competing books, Spies and the Pepys biography respectively. In spite of the loss of so many small private outlets, we have, in my opinion, the best-arranged and best-stocked bookshops in the world. Surprisingly to some people, books, not food, computer equipment or domestic appliances are the most popular commodity supplied online.
	Although our theatre suffers from time to time from neglect and failure, except perhaps in the area of long-running popular musicals, it has also rarely been so innovative. Nicholas Hytner, who now runs the National Theatre, says he will programme as adventurously as he can. He wants a new approach to musicals; one that will bridge the gap between music, drama and dance, and a satirical musical will open the season at the National's Lyttleton stage. At the smallest stage, the Cottesloe, will be "Elmina's Kitchen", written by Kwame Kwei-Armah, himself already a successful television actor, about black residents of Hackney. Hytner, who plans to cut prices at the National so that all 1,100 seats at the Olivier Theatre cost £10, will direct "Henry V" with the black actor Adrian Lester in the lead. It is to be hoped that this is an early and pioneering move in a cutting or even removing of the cost of attending centres for the arts, which was begun by giving free access to museums, and thus making performances or exhibitions more easily available to students and lower income groups.
	Removing entry charges at national museums has been a success, leading to more visitors, particularly at the V&A and the other museums in South Kensington. As my noble friend Lord Harrison said, number increases of visitors range between 111 per cent and more than 80 per cent. There was a 10 per cent rise in the number of children visiting a museum during the year 2001–02. It is heartening to scan a list of art galleries and note the many repetitions of the words "free entry".
	The V&A was one of the last among major museums to introduce a charge. That was in 1997, when visitor numbers were cut by half. In the past year, the V&A enjoyed its highest visitor figures in its history. It appears quite simply that when charges are removed double the number of people come, and when they are imposed half disappear—a direct and obvious correlation, and a rebuttal of the argument put forward by some museum directors that free entry would have little or no impact on numbers. Many people are now making return visits to the major museums and large numbers are visiting for the first time.
	However, an increase in funding is needed if regional museums and art galleries are to follow suit and enjoy improved attendance. They have suffered years of under-funding and neglect, which often result in their inability to put on new, visitor-attracting exhibitions. The popularity of major museums such as the National Gallery is due in great part to its putting on show the work of great artists, apart from its regular and ongoing collections.
	It is worth noting that long queues at the Royal Academy, where admission is not free, bear witness to the success of the Aztecs exhibition. People do want to see art; many regard it as an indispensable part of their lives, and visit, whether they are charged or not. Meanwhile, regional galleries, which must charge to survive, continue to suffer from lack of funding. That means that local communities with young families are deprived of what we now know would contribute hugely to their appreciation, and perhaps love, of art. The outlook will be sad if children in more distant areas of the UK grow up deprived of access to art collections while those in London take frequent museum visits for granted and part of a way of life.
	Ethnic minorities are making a substantial contribution to our cultural life. Immigrants, and particularly the children of immigrants, have begun in recent years enormously to enrich drama, dance, music, film and television, bringing a freshness and vitality to many art forms. Their presence has for far longer worked a steady enhancement of our literature. Salman Rushdie, born in India, won the Booker Prize with his novel Midnight's Children, which ultimately won the overall prize, the Booker of Bookers, awarded for all those novels which won individually over the years. He has adapted that book for the London stage, where it has just opened at the Barbican and should introduce his novel to a new audience. Other writers and major literary prize-winners are from the Asian subcontinent. Their contribution, particularly to literary fiction in the second half of the past century, cannot be overrated. It is bringing to the reading public a familiarity with a once-hidden way of life, customs, ceremonies, luxury and poverty and simple day-to-day living. That fiction provides a unique departure from tradition and expectation, first appearing on the British scene at a time of threatening staleness in fiction writing. Introducing readers to great writers of the past can be a function of film. Stephen Daldry's "The Hours", from David Hare's screenplay, should bring a new readership to the novels of Virginia Woolf.
	People of Afro-Caribbean origin are too often associated with dance. Noble Lords will all be aware of the racist, though well-intentioned, remark, "They make such wonderful dancers". The truth is that Afro-Caribbean people make wonderful writers, painters and actors as well and that anyone of any race may become a talented dancer provided that the will and skill are there.
	The Laban Centre at Deptford Creekside welcomes and brings to this country applicants for training from all over the world. The centre was designed by the Tate Modern architects, who have created the new building which houses the centre as a wonder of colour and light. A 300-seat theatre reflects the belief that performance is central to everything Laban does. There are 13 dance studios, a dance health suite and a 100-seat lecture theatre. Laban, one of Europe's leading institutions of dance artist training, launches next Monday with a programme from a selection of the UK's top contemporary dance artists. Its presence where it is offers an enormous boost to Deptford. Laban provides local people with access to a range of activities and services, not available before in this neglected area. It offers courses for children and young people and teachers of GCSE dance. Its adult classes are in contemporary dance, classical ballet, jazz and African and African-Caribbean. Matthew Bourne, whose production of the "Nutcracker!" has just finished its run at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, is a former student of Laban before it came to Deptford. It has been delivering dance, education and community dance initiatives in south-east London for 30 years. It is Laban's aim to work with the local community, thus interacting with its cultural life.
	If more institutions develop those sorts of plans to introduce local residents to their projects and performances, the cultural future looks hopeful.

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, on securing the debate and on initiating it so forcefully. Last summer he set in motion a similarly meaty debate on small businesses. We hope that his successes in that regard will be maintained. However, I disagree with him on the principle that special exhibitions should also be free.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, knows that I have a vicarious leper's squint into her considerable oeuvre through having had Chief Inspector Wexford as an immediate neighbour. It is a privilege to follow her today. I share her passion for books. I thank both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their speeches. Those are familiar and oft repeated words. I am conscious of the hazard of using familiar and oft repeated words ever since my sister wrote to me saying, "The school did 'Hamlet' last week; most of the parents had seen it before, but they laughed just the same"!
	In your Lordships House the part played by the arts in the cultural life of this country is a given. I quote the opening four sentences of a recent article by Mr Simon Jenkins on architecture, his own favoured art:
	"Pictures are beautiful. Plays stimulate. Operas thrill. Music uplifts the spirit".
	I doubt that those words would be controversial in your Lordships' eyes. In this country we are lucky that all four desiderata are so ubiquitous.
	I have a modest interest to declare, although of a more impecuniary nature. As I approach the psalmist's three score years and ten, and thus with the perspective of relative maturity, I have set myself to see all Shakespeare's plays—many of them again—as they gradually appear. I did not vote in the BBC's greatest Briton contest, but I have the feeling that if the vote had been carried out by foreigners, Shakespeare would have come higher than number five. A prophet is not without honour except in his own country.
	Last night I saw "Macbeth" in a house without a single spare seat. The last time I saw it my late first wife and I met, without preplanning, with other friends in the foyer afterwards. "Just one damn quotation after another", said the husband. Seeing the play last night and "The Tempest" a fortnight ago reminded me of how, as with the Bible, our language and our educated patois have been shaped by him. I am lucky—as we all are—to have reasonable confidence that I shall get the chance to see the whole canon.
	I am envious of the Minister and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that they are comparatively awash with money. The late Lord Ridley declined to serve as arts Minister under my noble friend Lady Thatcher on the grounds that the arts constituency wanted money from the Minister of which there was never enough and he was not prepared to spend his life saying no. From my own two years in that office I can validate his view. But even today, in days of plenty, it still matters that the money should be spent well.
	When I was arts Minister in the new post-1992 department, confronted with a cut in funding, I rejected the advice of at least one of my predecessors that I should raid the museums to bolster the Arts Council, however sharply they would react to a cut, as indeed was the case. We had been setting the museums challenges, and they had been meeting them. It seemed to me wrong that we should reward their achievements by dispiriting them. I mention that because the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, draws our attention to museums and their present status, on which he concentrated in his speech.
	However, I have one criticism of the leadership of the department since 1997, which I quoted in a debate on the Licensing Bill and of which I was reminded last night at "Macbeth". That is that they are sometimes infirm of purpose. During the run up to the decision, not just on the Licensing Bill, but also on whether the Lottery should be non-profitable or whether museums should have free access, they hedged, havered, vacillated and walked the battlements of Elsinore. One of my favourite quotations from Beatrix Potter occurs in The Tale of Pigling Bland when Pigling Bland's brother, Alexander, is jumping up and down and Miss Potter says magisterially,
	"Alexander was always hopelessly volatile".
	In the end the Government decided on free access for museums after as unproductive a diversion about VAT as the Treasury's initial offer on church repairs VAT turned out to be, but they have still not decided the essential issue of determining what is the amount needed for the core funding of individual national museums. It is assumed that if one confers a percentage increase one is being fair, but it is not fair if the base figure for that museum is wrong. Free access has enabled many of us to visit museums more often than perhaps we did before. But the aficionado visits a museum to see what is exhibited and the fact that he passes through the door more times does not necessarily mean that he will always visit the shop, which is an important discretionary feature of funding for museums. So the museum's finances are not necessarily the beneficiary.
	I realise the amount of political capital that the Government have tied up in free access, despite the downside of other museums not only being in financial trouble, but also being deprived of the VAT concession. I hope that the Government have not wholly turned their backs on the principle of an annual ticket with multiple free visits, which would not only recoup funding from tourists who make a one-off expenditure, but would also give museums a further incentive to widen their audiences and give those whom I suppose I am obliged to call their stakeholders a sense that they really hold their stake.
	I have said once before in the House that in the private sector I used to give charities a 90 per cent discount, which I spelt out on their invoices, because the remaining 10 per cent that they paid gave our charity clients the sense that they were paying their way and that they were thus full clients in terms of holding us to account.
	The terms of the Motion mean that the Minister will be speaking to the subject at some length. I look forward to that. In conclusion, because this is a holistic debate on a large part of the department's responsibilities, I am disappointed that the BBC's terrestrial channels are increasingly turning their backs on the arts or describing as the arts things that some of us would be too fastidious so to describe.

Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for initiating the debate on museums which play such a vital role in the cultural life of the nation. I welcome the Government's policy of free admission to the national museums. That has undoubtedly had a major effect on encouraging more people to visit them. However, such a policy has not extended to all regional museums under local authority control nor to university museums, although many of them do not charge.
	Free access is extremely important, as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, especially in allowing access to low income groups. They are often overlooked. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, mentioned the point in relation to aficionados. It is important that low income groups have the opportunity of repeat visits to museums; if there is a charge often people will not visit a museum more than once.
	The Minister may also wish to consider a scheme at the Museum of Antiquities in Newcastle, which encourages schools groups to visit by paying their travel expenses. Many schools cannot afford to fund transport to museums, especially from rural areas and so miss out. The scheme has been undertaken with funding authorities and is extremely successful.
	I make no apology for focusing on archaeology. I declare an interest as secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group. APPAG was set up in 2001 as a focus for parliamentary interests in archaeology. We have 144 members from both Houses, drawn from all parties. I mention that because we have only 55 members from this House and we welcome all new members. I hope that some noble Lords listening today will join.
	Last year APPAG conducted an inquiry into the current state of archaeology in the UK. It was the largest ever parliamentary inquiry into archaeology. I have a copy of the report. If anyone wants a copy I can supply one. As background briefing, we received more than 267 submissions from interested parties. We held five committee sessions at which we took evidence from all the key players; from the chief executive of English Heritage, the director of the British Museum, the keepers of the national museums in Wales and Scotland, the Museums Association and the Society of Museum Archaeologists. We also held one public meeting.
	The report can be accessed from our website, which is www.sal.org.uk/appag. I mention that because many people now make visits to museums via the Internet. That is becoming an increasingly important way to visit museums which are not in one's locality.
	A theme of the report is that museums play an essential role—the leading role—in presenting archaeology to the wider public. As the APPAG report states: museums represent to a large extent the public face of archaeology. It is during visits to museums that children first start to learn about the lives of their ancestors. It is the museums that engage the public's interest, maintain that interest through temporary and permanent displays and serve it through the preservation of artefacts and archives.
	Public interest in archaeology has never been greater thanks to the success of TV programmes such as "Time Team" and "Meet the Ancestors". We spoke to one broadcaster who said that archaeology is the new television food or gardening. Indeed, perhaps one way to obtain a ratings winner could be by mixing all three together.
	However, despite the popularity of archaeology the discipline is in crisis due to long-term government neglect. That includes the neglect of museums. For example, the British Museum currently faces a budget deficit of £6.5 million and must lose up to 150 staff. It was unfortunate that the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, mentioned inept management as the management at the British Museum has just changed. We hope that the new director will have every success. It was particularly unfortunate in the context of this debate because the British Museum was one of the few national museums to fight the introduction of charges. Some of its financial difficulties are a consequence of not imposing charges initially.
	Other museums are in trouble. Norfolk Museums Service was threatened with cuts which included the closure of two museums. It has won a temporary reprieve thanks to a strong local campaign, but only while a review of the museum service is carried out. Dover Museum is faced with cuts of up to a third of its operating costs, which will have a disastrous impact on it. There are many other examples of posts being lost with the resultant loss in expertise.
	We were told that the report Renaissance in the Regions would be the saviour of the regional museums. That report, which was published in 2001, vividly demonstrates the impact of the systematic underfunding on regional museums. It proposes the establishment of a network of "hub" museums in each of the nine regions of England that would receive £267 million over five years. The Government's spending review announced last October was hugely disappointing. It made available only £70 million over three years, of which just £30 million is new money. As a result Resource has been forced to phase in Renaissance and only three regions will receive significant funding in the current spending round—the North East through Tyne and Wear museums, the West Midlands and the South West.
	I have a question for the Minister: when will the three hubs know exactly how much money they are to receive? Planning is extremely difficult at the moment. I shall understand if the Minister cannot give the amounts of money which each museum will receive, but I hope that she can give some indication of when it will be available.
	I understand that Resource hopes to get more funding in the next spending review, but of course there is absolutely no guarantee. Furthermore, the Designation Challenge Fund, which has provided a very useful stream of funding to some 70 designated museums over the past few years, is now going to be replaced by the Renaissance funding. That could mean that some museums, which had designated status but which will not be hubs, will lose out. The report Renaissance in the Regions was very good at analysing the problems faced by regional museums, but much less good at saying on what the extra money should be spent.
	One project that should be supported under the Renaissance banner is the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which is intended to record archaeological objects found by members of the public—metal detector users and others—for public benefit. Pilot schemes have been running since 1997. Everyone agrees they have been very successful. Thanks to a lottery grant, a regional network of some 35 finds liaison officer posts is being established in regional museums across England and Wales.
	However, the present lottery-funded scheme will end in April 2006 and there is an urgent need to establish funding on a long-term basis. Renaissance in the Regions provides an ideal framework, which the Minister has acknowledged. I thank the Minister for her personal support to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which has allowed its survival.
	The report's other main recommendation concerning museums is the need to establish local authority-run museums on a statutory basis. Local authorities have a legal obligation to maintain a public library service and, we assume, shortly they will have a duty to maintain the historic environment records (SMRs) on a statutory basis.
	It should be a human right to find out about one's cultural heritage in local museums, but I understand that the cost would make any Chancellor blush. I do not believe it will ever happen. However, I support any commitment the Government can make to furthering the money available to national museums, but especially local museums, in the next spending review.

Lord Freyberg: My Lords, we are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for securing this afternoon's debate on the arts. I wish to concentrate on the second half of his Motion; namely,
	"the contribution made through free access to museums and art galleries".
	As a keen campaigner for this cause, I am delighted that free admission to our wonderful national museums has proved to be as popular as it has, encouraging so many extra visits. The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, have already mentioned the impressive figures of the V&A and the Science Museums, so I shall not repeat them. They represent a huge success story and I would like to see it continue.
	However, there are signs that the Government are failing to understand and respond to the museums' plea for sustainable funding. That is true both for the regional museums, which have suffered debilitating underfunding over many years, but also, perhaps surprisingly, for the very institutions which are currently attracting record-breaking attendances.
	The Government are to be praised for investing in our museums and for considerably increasing their grant-in-aid funding after years of falling revenue under previous administrations. That is what led a number of formerly free museums to take the serious step of deciding to charge for admission. It would be a pity for the process to start all over again, which some directors fear is already beginning to happen.
	It cannot be stated too strongly that the Government now have an increased responsibility for maintaining museums' long-term financial stability. That is because national museums are more financially dependent on government than previously. Some which used to raise around 50 per cent of their own income now receive up to 90 per cent of it from central government. The Government are right to vaunt the considerable sums they are putting into the museum sector, but, alas, it is also true that over the past decade alone museums have suffered an alarming decrease in grant-in-aid, which amounts to up to 30 per cent since 1992 in the case of the British Museum and 27 per cent in the case of the Natural History Museum.
	Although the grant-in-aid funding to museums and galleries over the next three years shows a real-term increase overall—some have a decrease—it is already apparent that museums with a huge rise in visitor numbers are suffering additional financial burdens which are not compensated for in the modest estimates for increased numbers. For example, the Natural History Museum has had to spend an extra £500,000 this year to hire sufficient temporary staff to look after the increased number of visitors, while the Imperial War Museum expects higher costs for cleaning and wear and tear on the infrastructure of £100,000 in both London and Manchester.
	Museums that maintained the principle of free admission are still suffering financially from their stance, as the noble Lord, Redesdale, mentioned, enjoying no compensation for entry fee as well as missing out on years of being unable to reclaim VAT, which has cost the British Museum about £80 million. The British Museum is also set to suffer a reduction in the real value of its grant-in-aid in 2004–05 and 2005–06. As it is an institution of unique expertise and scholarship, I add my voice to those of many others by asking the Government to stop hiding behind the rest of the museum figures, which have increased, and give it the help it so deservedly needs.
	The recent initiative under the Treasure Act 1996 places an additional financial burden on the British Museum of £500,000 which it has had to find from its already straitened core funding. I urge the Government to be aware of the cost implications when they impose new duties and responsibilities on museums and to allow access to funds for them. Those and many related issues are eloquently and forcefully spelled out in the recent Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport report into national museum funding and free admission. Its conclusions and recommendations are timely and instructive. I should like to highlight a few of them.
	First, there is a serious problem about the rate of pay for museum staff, which is affecting morale and scholarship. The submission by Prospect and the Public and Commercial Services Union is sobering. Until 1996, museum staff pay was linked to that of civil servants. In the five years since, it has fallen by about 10 per cent relative to pay in the Civil Service. Annual pay increases are between 1 per cent and 1.5 per cent less than those of staff in government departments, such as the DCMS. Highly qualified assistant curators at the British Museum earn only £13,500 after three years, including London weighting. It has become increasingly difficult to recruit and retain staff of sufficient calibre. As the report so chillingly states,
	"in effect, already low-paid workers are subsidising the Government's cultural agenda".
	That problem is even more acute in the regions, as described in the review, Renaissance in the Regions. Indeed, many of the issues facing national museums are several degrees worse for the regionals. That is why it was surprising that the Government, having taken the initiative to ask Resource to look into the problems facing regional museums and to come up with a strategy to remedy long-term decline, then failed to deliver even the minimum required financial help. Of course, even the inadequate amount promised is welcome, and I urge the Government to build on it, making up for a lost opportunity.
	Other points worth raising from the report include the lack of transparency in the allocation of funds, referred to as "opaque" by museums, which are left in the dark about whether the Government agree with their targets and how they reach the sums that they award. It would also be helpful if museums could access money for specific projects from sources other than the DCMS. For example, so much emphasis is being placed on educational programmes that it seems reasonable that the Department for Education and Skills should contribute to the valuable teaching work being undertaken. Moreover, museum staff are frequently called on to teach university students as well as schoolchildren.
	Finally, as noble Lords have mentioned, there is no standardisation in the methodology of collecting visitor numbers and other museum statistics. That could be easily remedied without incurring huge costs. More confusing is the way that the DCMS and museums present the same statistics differently for their own ends. Perhaps it would be asking too much to expect government not to spin and an aspiring institution not to plea. But I live in hope that the two can come closer together and that we may all benefit.

Lord Sheldon: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Harrison referred to his early years awakening his interest in the arts. My enthusiasm about the arts was also largely prompted by my personal experience. At the age of 14 to 15, I found myself exploring the theatre, art galleries, opera and museums. I was fortunate. I was able to attend the theatre by queuing up for an hour and getting into a matinee performance for nine old pence. Museums and art galleries were free and almost invariably deserted. With no one to guide me, I had an extreme catholicity of taste. I was especially fortunate in choosing by chance my first taste of opera on a visit to London, paying one shilling to sit in the back row of Sadler's Wells to see "Il Trovatore".
	So I was hooked at an early and impressionable age on the many art forms open to me. I was also fortunate that the cost was just about acceptable. That is why I believe that access is so important—it is critical. My noble friend Lady Blackstone, for whom I have great respect and admiration, will no doubt have some good examples of improvement in access. What I am most concerned about are the numbers of our young people who gain a foothold in arts appreciation. I want to see not just improvements in perception but a scale change in those who are enticed into the wonderful world of music, the graphic arts and the performing arts. That is my great goal for my noble friend's department.
	Chris Smith, as Secretary of State at the DCMS, was much to be admired for his difficult decision—difficult because he had to convince the Treasury—to free admission to museums. That has been triumphantly successful, as several noble Lords have said. Chris Smith should be proud of introducing so great an opportunity to those who are able to enjoy so much of our heritage and history.
	The noble Lords, Lord Redesdale and Lord Freyberg, mentioned the Resource report on museums and galleries, which was chaired by my noble friend Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, whom I am glad to see in his place. The report, Renaissance in the Regions, produced the valuable notion of a hub in each region that would embrace the many museums that could be assisted and deal with their common problems. One difficulty that they face is that, whereas there used to be a steady stream of people—curators and others working in the field—who worked their way up through provincial galleries to posts of greater opportunity and responsibility, that route nowadays too frequently cannot be used because of a lack of pay and current promotion prospects. As the report showed, over a five-year period, about £250 million is required for the task of restoring our museums to the position envisaged by their founders.
	Although the Treasury has supplied an instalment, there is a danger that insufficient will be available during the next few years to meet the great hopes of that sensible scheme. Undoubtedly, there has been a great change in our attitudes to museums. My early recollections are that I was frequently the only person in a number of the smaller museums and galleries that I had the privilege of visiting. The situation has altered. In some exhibitions, it is difficult to see some of the works of art or of interest. One consequence is that staffing costs have had to increase to take care of larger attendances.
	One advantage of the All-Party Arts and Heritage Group is that by attending out of usual hours, one can absorb so much of beauty and interest. As a joint president of the group, together with the noble Lord, Lord Renton, I must express the gratitude of so many Members for its work. Despite my position as joint president, as everyone knows, the real work is done by Sir Patrick Cormack, ably supported by the noble Lord, Lord Crathorne. It is they who have been instrumental in civilising so many of us by our visits to and involvement in so many arts activities.
	A major problem nowadays is the inability to retain in our country so many of the great works that come up for sale. I know the enormous demands on our institutions, but we must accord a higher priority to keeping such works as our predecessors were able to acquire. We should be able to keep more of them for our general benefit.
	I mentioned the theatres that I knew in earlier days. The problem is that so many have been so little changed in the past 50 years. Repertory theatres were the lifeblood of theatre; talent rose from there to the highest levels. Those avenues of promotion are by no means as well traversed as they used to be. Things are not dealt with in the same way, and we forego a great deal of talent as a result. Theatres need hundreds of millions of pounds to pay for refurbishment; they need air conditioning; they need better seat spacing because our legs are longer than they used to be; and they need proper toilets and other facilities. Hundreds of millions of pounds will be required.
	We must improve the theatres physically. Lottery money went into some theatres—in Stoke and Edinburgh—but there is no continuing money to meet their continuing expenditure. The biggest theatres in Sunderland, Leeds, Glasgow, Brighton, Portsmouth, Bristol and elsewhere fall far short of modern standards and have received no lottery money. It saddens me that the theatre, with its high prices, is not frequented so much by younger people.
	Still less does opera find in its audience the young and those less able to afford high seat prices. There are opera houses in many cities in France—Nancy, Avignon, Lyons—and Germany, although sponsorship in eastern Germany declined because of the change of regime. They are restoring opera houses in Italy and Spain. Even in the United States, there are about 150 opera houses. I know that they have tax relief that we do not, but, in this country, we have only five opera companies—Covent Garden, English National Opera, Opera North, Welsh National Opera and Scottish Opera. That is all that we can arrange, and it is a major scandal, when compared to the position in the rest of the world. Seasons are getting shorter. Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet were forced to share the same orchestra. As the pressure increases on our few opera companies, it is the finance people who are moving into the top positions, not the creative, imaginative people. Such are the problems that we face.
	There is also the enormous cost of opera here, compared with elsewhere. Thirty-five years ago, I went to a beautiful opera house in Ljubljana in Slovenia, where I saw a splendidly performed opera. I sat in the most expensive seats in the house, and it cost me half a crown—twelve and a half pence. Obviously, the subsidy was enormous. It was paid by the Government or by the local authority. In the United States, it is paid by public-spirited benefactors, assisted by tax relief. We have fallen behind so many countries in providing such assistance to the arts.
	The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, mentioned the BBC. I accept the need to maintain the high standards that we have had. I consider the BBC to be our greatest cultural advantage, above all else. We must be careful about the sniping at and the attacks on that deservedly well loved institution. I cannot understand why, given the paucity of operatic events in Britain, we see so few of the many excellent productions on television. I have been assured by those in control of such matters that things will change, but I have been assured of that for several years now. Year after year, I get those assurances, but still I look in vain in the list of forthcoming events. The Government should insist on improvement, as a consequence of any subsidy. People cannot afford to go to the opera; we should, at least, let them see what they are missing. At some stage in the future, they might decide to go and pay not the ridiculous prices that are charged now but a little less.
	Finally, I shall say a word about the cinema. We have long held a distinct position in the film world. The expenditure that we incurred has a useful place in the world of film. Nowadays, the major distributors are so dominant that it is increasingly difficult to find worthwhile outlets of the kind that we used to have through which to convey our brand of humour and moderation and our natural talent for ordinary but memorable roles.
	But I end by pressing the case for greater access, particularly for the young. There was a period shortly after the war when the theatres, concert halls and opera houses were filled with young people. The success of our policy on the arts will be largely judged with reference to our success in bringing that about again. I look forward to further initiatives from my noble friend.

Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and welcome the debate. It seems a long time since we fought and won the battle for free access to museums and galleries, with a series of debates and questions, many instigated by Lord Clancarty. I am happy to see that he still takes an interest in the subject.
	As someone who always advocated free access and supported the effective campaign by the National Art Collections Fund, I was delighted by the result. The Minister will remember that, as a trustee of National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, I agreed only with the greatest reluctance to the imposition of a minimal entrance fee there. That was not because of the income that entrance fees generate but because of the ability to deduct VAT, as has been said. There was an upside to the charging of entry fees, in Liverpool particularly, perhaps. There are eight parts to NMGM, of which the Walker, the Merseyside Maritime Museum and the Lady Lever are the best known. Many people who purchased a season ticket or a multiple pass of the sort to which my noble friend Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville referred ended up visiting parts of those museums and galleries that they had not known existed. In some venues, the visitor figures went up, following the imposition of entry fees.
	Another upside was that we were able to get more accurate attendance figures. With new technology, that has become more important, and it is relevant to any decisions on the future of our museums and galleries. It should also be pointed out that charges for special exhibitions are not necessarily off-putting. Like my noble friend, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, about that. That has not been the case in Liverpool, and I must also refer to the fantastic success of the Aztecs exhibition at the Royal Academy. Reference has already been made to that exhibition, which is the longest-running special exhibition ever held in the Royal Academy and still brings in record numbers.
	Nevertheless, I am delighted that, as a result of the abolition of entry fees, NMGM, in particular, can point to a dramatic 79 per cent increase in attendance figures, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, said. However, that figure also reflects all the hard work that has gone into extending and improving the galleries in Liverpool and the access to them. We were happy to have the Minister with us to open the extension to the Walker last year. It is proving to be a terrific success and draw.
	The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, referred to the impressive increase in attendance at the London museums. Can the Minister say whether there is any way of finding out what proportion of that increase is represented by tourists or one-off visitors, as opposed to local residents? Perhaps, the statistics are not sufficiently sophisticated for us to make such a differentiation.
	I must underline the importance of continuing adequate budgetary support from the Government. It is essential for the upkeep of museums and galleries—in terms of the real estate, the collections, and the ability to add to those collections through purchasing power—that funding should be more than adequate; it should be generous. If it is not, many people running museums and galleries will continue leading a hand-to-mouth existence which does not reflect their enormous input.
	I turn now to the issue of conservation which, in part, arises due to the excellent Conservation Centre in Liverpool—well worth a visit for those who have not yet had the opportunity. It provides not just a resource for local collections, but also a national—indeed, an international—resource for training young people.
	I am chairman of the European Foundation for Heritage Skills which grew out of the Pro Venezia Viva campaign and the centre, which still exists in Venice, to train young people in heritage skills. There is a vital need for training and education facilities and opportunities in these skills, not only because those skills and techniques might otherwise be lost, but also because qualified craftsmen may find better paid jobs than university graduates in certain disciplines.
	Turning to the field of international relations, I echo all that the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, said concerning the importance of knowledge and understanding of our cultural heritage. That is even more true now that we are a multicultural and multi-faith society. It is essential that we should have every possible opportunity to learn, understand and exchange. In that respect, music and the performing arts, about which the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, spoke so eloquently, play just as important a role as the visual arts and museum collections.
	In that context, I should like to draw attention to the work of the Council of Europe. One of its original objectives was to bring the peoples of Europe together through educational and cultural heritage means. I am fortunate in working on the Committee for Education and Cultural Heritage in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The European Cultural Convention covers more than the 44 member countries of the Council of Europe. It includes signatories from some additional 10 countries; therefore, 54 countries in total.
	Sadly, the work of the Council of Europe is affected by budget constraints—a familiar story. I hope that our Government will play their part in ensuring that the United Kingdom supports the various efforts in that field within the Council of Europe and ensure that the focus does not move away, and look to the European Union—a much smaller grouping of countries—to carry out our cultural heritage obligations in the wider field. I look forward to hearing the Minister's reply.

Lord Moser: My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the British Museum Development Trust and other arts organisations. I therefore share the gratitude expressed to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for the opportunity to consider the importance of the arts in some depth.
	To any of us involved in the arts, it goes without saying that they matter. Indeed, they matter enormously. But sadly, that view cannot be taken as universal. There are many philistines in the wings of society—people who do not accept or realise all that the arts bring to civilised society and to our quality of life.
	I can do no better than quote the late President Kennedy who said:
	"The life of the Arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction in the life of the nation, is very close to the centre of a nation's purpose, and is a test of a nation's civilisation".
	Today's debate gives us a rare opportunity to recall how central the arts are, or at least should be, to our own society. We are reminded of their economic importance—their contribution to GDP, employment, cultural industries, tax income and perhaps, above all, tourism. The British Museum is proud of the fact that it remains a leading tourist attraction, welcoming millions of visitors from abroad.
	That is all vital and makes the case for the arts acceptable to most politicians. But the value of the arts goes much deeper. They are the engine for creativity at its finest. They provide the context for writers, composers, artists and architects whose contribution to the nation's greatness will survive long after economic and political achievements are forgotten. Cultural activities are the essence of good community life. Hence, the importance of the community arts. They are the best bridge between races and religions in an increasingly multicultural and multi-racial society. They help to regenerate our environment and they bring into our lives the most powerful antidote to material values. Not least, they bring happiness, pleasure, comfort and general enrichment to all of us.
	Given all that, it is perhaps surprising and disappointing that one still has constantly to fight for the arts. I remember Benjamin Britten famously saying:
	"The average Briton thought, and still thinks, of the Arts as suspect and expensive luxuries".
	That attitude, I fear, still lingers somewhat. At the same time, I believe that we have moved on quite a bit. Certainly, the arts have witnessed a vast transformation in recent years. I wish I had time to illustrate what has been happening in music, opera, visual arts, museums and so forth. What is remarkable is how much is going on in spite of continued funding difficulties. Sadly, I cannot avoid saying that our arts remain seriously under-funded. There are closures and cuts, and innovative, contemporary and experimental efforts have a tough time. Many arts organisations—not just the British Museum—are in deficit. I reassure your Lordships that the British Museum deficit is under control and, under our new director, we are in the presence of a wonderful future.
	The trouble is that financial pressures are increasing on all fronts. The corporate sector is finding support more difficult and is turning—perhaps understandably, but disappointingly—towards social and community causes, not realising how much the arts are involved with just those pursuits. Trusts and foundations have lost money, many local authorities are in trouble, and the arts suffer. Except for a few remarkable philanthropical household names, most individuals—even wealthy ones—have not yet caught on to the American approach to philanthropy.
	Finally, there is the Government themselves—the most important source of support. I am conscious of recent increases in overall government funding, which is most welcome, as are a whole stream of initiatives from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, such as the creative partnerships. There is much to be grateful for. I salute the arts Ministers for all their efforts against a not-always-helpful Treasury. But, considering what the arts can do for society at large, overall funding gaps remain. Only a step change in funding will solve the problem. I cannot overemphasise the importance of looking afresh at each sector of the arts, discovering what it could and should do for society, and ascertaining the financial implications.
	In that context, I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for his special attention to museums and galleries. They are one of the glories of the nation's cultural life, ranging from the largest and oldest, the British Museum, which this year celebrates its 250th birthday, to other great museums and galleries in the capital and throughout the country. Between them, they welcome some 30 million visitors a year—close to 5 million in the case of the British Museum.
	In common with other museums, we are painfully short of funds and therefore many of our longed-for activities are vulnerable. I am thinking of our desire to improve our regional links even further, although they are already strong. Our grant-in-aid has been cut by 22 per cent in real terms during the past decade—a tough decline in public funding. Acquisitions have fallen to ludicrous levels and much else is threatened.
	Some argue that we should abandon free entry, but that is not on the cards. It would of course improve our finances, but we are passionately faithful to the belief of our founder, Sloane. He believed in free entry 250 years ago, as we do now, for all the reasons that have been mentioned. We want our collections to inspire visitors of all ages and backgrounds, without the hurdle of a charge, and thereby provide a central route to life-long learning.
	Never has that road been more important than now. The British Museum covers all civilisations and world cultures, as reflected in our displays. And now more than ever, under the inspiring new directorship of Neil MacGregor, it is in the linkages between civilisations and cultures that understanding of our complex world can advance. It is a most effective way of helping schools and colleges to prepare the young for the world citizenship which lies ahead of them.
	We are active in education. The British Museum receives some 200,000 children on formal school visits, many more with families. We reach many more through our regional activities, our website and other technical means. All this helps us to bring our insights into the world's cultures to countless youngsters.
	We are proud of all that, but it is only a fraction of what we would like to do. We miss the necessary resources to play our central educational role. We are poised to do much more for the young but need financial support for our teaching role and educational materials; for our technical outreach activities; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, said, for transport facilities to bring young people to the museums from up and down the country. Has there ever been a more attractive cause for joined-up action between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Education and Skills to produce a new linked world between the museums and public education?
	As my passion lies at the beginning of life, in the schools, I conclude with a quotation from the first arts Minister, Jennie Lee. She said memorably:
	"If children at an early age become accustomed to the arts as part of everyday life, they are more likely in maturity first to accept the arts and then to demand them".

Lord Bragg: My Lords, I echo those who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, on introducing the debate. It is always a fight to haul the arts out of the margins of parliamentary attention. The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, has done us all a service.
	The Labour Government, as previous Labour governments since 1945, have done well for the arts, but of course there have been and there always will be failings. What would we do without them? Yet in a comparative world, I would suggest that thanks to the interest of committed Labour politicians from Jennie Lee, through Chris Smith, to the right honourable Tessa Jowell and my noble friend Lady Blackstone, their arts policy, seeded just after the last war, will be looked back on as a success story, though, in the nature of things, there are signs of strain.
	That strain is guaranteed, for in the arts as in other areas of our public life you are faced with infinite demand from finite resources—not a happy mathematical problem. However, as Christopher Wren's tomb proclaims of himself in St Paul's Cathedral,
	"if you require a monument look around".
	Similarly with the arts in the United Kingdom, look around. Look on the Tyne; along the South Bank in London, in the Tate galleries in Cornwall and Liverpool; in the Playhouse. Leeds; the Halle in Bridgewater Hall, Manchester; the developments in the old docklands in Cardiff; the burgeoning of contemporary poetry; and the wave after wave of playwrights, novelists, musicians, dancers, actors, painters and broadcasters. Despite the inescapable scepticism and complaint, there is a whisperingly good story to tell. And most of it has been well told so far in the debate.
	I want to concentrate rather generally on the first part of the Motion because the juxtaposition of arts and culture raises a few questions. It is now widely accepted, especially since Richard Hoggart's book, The Uses of Literacy—a book which has arguably had a defining influence in our thinking about culture—that the high arts such as opera, ballet, theatre, painting, classical music and classical literature are only part of culture.
	For some, they are the essential part; for others, they are of little consequence. But it cannot be either assumed or, I think, proved that those for whom the high arts are essential are richer or more fulfilled than those who find their imaginative and cultural nourishment elsewhere. There is an essay of Hazlitt's where he reflects that however well educated and well primed a man might be in university rhetoric and debate, an uneducated, even illiterate opponent in a pub is always capable of knocking his argument down. He was saying something about the democracy of the mind.
	Similarly, I believe that imagination is not a snob. It does not require that you wear fine clothes to have fine thoughts or that you need a good degree to get the best insights out of life. It is true, I think, for many that a symphony by Beethoven or a painting by Turner can inspire astounding sensations which may even cool into thought and will certainly leave behind happy scars of satisfaction. But so, I suggest, can a walk on the fells in the Lake District; so can a journey on a small boat on the Solway skimming before a fine wind; so, though it may sadden some of your Lordships, can a novel or even a pop concert; and so can a complex and philosophically demanding game of football.
	High sensational visceral nourishment, even a sort of intellectual awakening, will not be confined to the high arts. Culture grows wherever it finds fertile soil. In towns, in villages, in suburbs and in city centres throughout this land, culture is an intermeshing of societies: in local history and photographic, cinematic and theatrical societies; in sports, from darts to rock climbing, cricket to squash; in institutions such as churches, women's institutes, Age Concern, Scouts, Guides and choirs; and in specialised passions such as classic cars, brass bands, Morris dancing, kite flying and North Sea swimming. There are those and more—club cultures, pub cultures and grub cultures—all of which make for a full cultural life and they have a considerable overlap with what we call "the arts".
	In fact, the arts best exist interpenetrably. Cut them off from general culture and I think they die a little. Cutting them off in whatever way—the old ways such as putting some of them, snobbishly, socially, financially and psychologically out of reach of the majority; or the new ways of giving them special privileges in subsidy and support—will differentiate the arts crucially from the rest of culture, most of which gets its diurnal strength and support from just rolling along as best it can, freely, as it were; in other words, unsubsidised.
	This is an unfashionable argument. Indeed, as president of the National Campaign for the Arts, as someone who has served on the Arts Council for some years, made arts programmes for even more years and taken part in more debates and spats on the importance of subsidy in the arts than is healthy for a balanced life, I believe it is a rather dangerous argument.
	I have argued many times that the arts are different, special and need special treatment, and always need extra special treatment now—and I agree with those who have proposed that today—but, for the moment, as we are encouraged to ruminate in the House, I should like to try to skin the cat another way. Why does the part played by the high arts in our culture need and receive subsidy and public-purse support, often on a very high level?
	The first line of argument is rather shaky. Does high art enrich our lives—make them soar and purify our emotions—more than and, crucially, differently from other experiences? Between Tristan and Isolde, a walk up Wasdale Head, Elvis Presley at Las Vegas, Medea, Swann's Way and Arsenal winning at Wembley could be a close run thing. The responses may be different, but can they be put into any intellectually defensible or useful hierarchy?
	The argument of variety can carry weight, but whether, as it were, by analogy, only certain colours in the variety of the spectrum of life have to be supported by tax is another question. To pursue that analogy, we seem to agree that the colours red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo can and must take care of themselves, but violet needs a subsidy. Why?
	Or is art sufficiently defended by calling it a great moral teacher? Certainly, after reading George Eliot and Jane Austen I feel I ought to behave better. I somehow feel in the reading of them that I have behaved better already. But is that unique? When I listen to the King James version of the Beatitudes and hear Tyndale's great phrases calling up the best in all human kind, do I feel that the Austen-Eliot work is the sole access to good?
	As to great art "doing you good", sadly, that argument does not hold any water at all. The most cultivated country in the world in terms of high culture between 1870 and 1939 was Germany. Napoleon was a voracious novel reader. Hitler's original aim was to be a serious painter. Poetry has been used to stimulate the martial appetites since its beginning; the Iliad glorifies Achilles, the warrior, the sulky and brutal hero. Artists can be ogres; their acolytes merely cultivated monsters.
	What it comes to eventually is simply this. We support and subsidise certain of the arts because there are certain activities which engage the lives and talents of certain of those we admire enough to want to see, read, hear and otherwise engage with them. They need extra money; we stump up. We as a society have made that decision. It can be seen as unfair to others in our culture, but there it is. We have drawn an arbitrary line, and that is the heart of it.
	There are good regiments in support of subsidy. As we have heard, cities throughout Britain have proved, and are proving, that money devoted to arts projects can help to revive, even transform, their centres and their economy. In schools, where properly engaged, we see great benefits flow from arts teaching. Tourism is another ally. We can now prove with an orchestra of statistics that investment in the arts is an investment in tourism, which is an investment in our general prosperity, one that makes hard-headed, Gradgrind sense, which penetrates even the Jericho walls of the Treasury. For many, the arts are imaginatively the most testing way of understanding the mind and emotions.
	But it is the second part of the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, that carries the key. As has been said again and again, free access to museums and galleries has proved an instant and dramatic success. Free up the places to the people and it seems that multiple satisfactions are guaranteed. We should, by way of recognition and compensation to these galleries and museums, provide adequate sums so that their physical structures and necessary treasures are kept in good repair.
	But why do we stop with free access to museums? Why do we not grant those excellent performance companies already subsidised the extra resources to allow them substantial spans of time for free access, as is the case with museums and galleries? Why not? It is not so outlandish—no more than free schooling was once thought to be, or free libraries, or even free access to museums. Free access to the National Theatre? Yes. To the Royal Opera House, to ENO, to the Halle, to the Festival Hall, to the princely attractions of Birmingham? Yes. How pie in the sky it seems—but is it? Why should it be?
	We have a precedent for this free access. For the past 80 years or more, through radio and television, for a consistently modest fee to the BBC and no fee to commercial channels, the British public have been able to get all but free access to cultures high and low. On these new media the public are able to tune in to great music across the "tastelands" of generations, to distinguished drama, old and new, to fine comedy and documentaries. Here we have been given the chance to see the arts as part of our general culture on its most democratic media. Only one part, but still a part, thriving because of virtually free access and sensible regulation and administration. Why stop there?
	My broad and general conclusion is that as culture at the grass roots thrives on independence, self-sufficiency and the devotion of those involved, so at the subsidised level it must in response open its doors to all as freely as possible. This will re-energise interest, as it has with museums and galleries, and it will re-energise investment and the hold that those who go, those who participate, have on their government. Without that, the subsidised high arts will increasingly risk being seen as over-cosseted and resented as misfits, which, apart from anything else, would betray the works of the artists themselves, who want an audience as widely discerning as possible. They know, above all, as does the great public, that the wider the scope, the wider the reach, the richer the returns and the greater the future rewards for everyone. Freeing up the subsidised arts yet further would be a bold act of benign radicalism which would be welcomed by all.

Lord Coe: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for affording the House the opportunity to discuss the role of the arts in the cultural life of this country. I can reassure the noble Baroness the Minister that, on this occasion, she will be spared my regular bleatings about support for the London Olympics bid.
	In the few moments available to me I should like to focus on a musical art form that has a raw energy and a popular appeal but which is all too frequently overlooked by the arts establishment.
	It is true that jazz was born in America, is uniquely American, and could have been spawned only by a new world. But it is also true that jazz grew up all around us over the course of the last century. Its European roots are strong. It was an inseparable part of French cultural development and of its intellectual movement; it is popular throughout Scandinavia and the Low Countries; and it was feared, and equally revered, in the old communist world, where for many it was the oxygen of dissent and future political freedoms.
	Thankfully, we have come a long way since the controller of BBC Radio 3 sent the middle class of the Home Counties running for the hills when he made Duke Ellington the station's composer of the week—never mind that Ellington is one of the genuine giants of twentieth century music and Billy Strayhorn, his composer and arranger, the equal of any classically trained musician.
	The road to acceptance has never been an easy one. In 1919, The Times dismissed jazz, which had already reached these shores, with the words,
	"the object of a Jazz band apparently is to provide as much noise as possible. The method of doing so is immaterial and if music happens to be the result occasionally—so much the better".
	Thank goodness the public have always had a healthy disrespect for critics and later that year crowded into the London Hippodrome to see the original Dixieland Jazz Band. The critics continued to express their disapproval but the band played on for 15 months more, eventually even for George V.
	Since then, jazz has remained a strong and powerful force in the artistic fabric of this country. During the Second World War, many top American musicians passed through the UK, inspiring a new generation of British players such as Ronnie Scott and John Dankworth, who honed their skills in New York in the late 1940s and en route in the dance bands on transatlantic liners. They inspired, too, the writing of people such as Benny Green and Philip Larkin.
	Top American artists have continued to play to large audiences within this country, and British musicians such as George Shearing, Tubby Hayes, Annie Ross, Brian Lemon, Danny Moss and Courtney Pine have gained reputation and respectability in America.
	The traditional jazz boom of the 1950s led to a relatively quiet decade in the 1960s, but, with the help of artists such as George Melly and Chris Barber, forged a bridgehead into college campuses during the 1970s. Today, all styles of jazz can be heard in jazz clubs and pubs across the country and, from trad and mainstream through to avant-garde, our musicians still maintain their high and growing international reputation.
	Despite the development of jazz, there is still a great deal of debate about the status of the music as an art form. To many of its followers in the clubs and pubs, it is obviously a vibrant, dynamic and popular art form, even a way of life, but for many years the Arts Council and other arts funding bodies were very slow to recognise it as such and to fund it accordingly.
	To be fair, the Arts Council does now seem to be examining ways in which it can be more generous to jazz, and there is a belated recognition that jazz can and does benefit from public funding. But, like those of many quangos, the wheels of the Arts Council move slowly. Many musicians and club owners complain that the council fails to keep pace with developments in the jazz world.
	The Arts Council is over 50 years old and still bears many of its original hallmarks. It has a heavy bias towards the traditional performing arts—opera, theatre and ballet— with jazz often the poor relation in the arts establishment.
	That suspicion is borne out by an examination of Arts Council funding. In 1997–98, jazz received around £2 million from the Arts Council and the regional arts boards. But that fell to just under £1 million in the year 2000. Last year and this year saw an upturn in jazz funding, but it has made up only in part for the years of decline. Jazz groups such as Serious, Jazz Services and the National Jazz Youth Orchestra have all welcomed increased funding.
	However, as a former treasurer of the All-Party Jazz Appreciation Group in another place, I was constantly irritated by the massive discrepancy between the subsidies given to jazz and those given to other musical forms such as opera, even though opera attracts a similar number of devotees. In 1999–2000, Arts Council funding per attendee for jazz was a mere 25p. That compared to £2.26 for theatre and a massive £12.75 per head subsidy for opera.
	The attitude of the Arts Council towards jazz reinforces a vicious circle. The council sees jazz as a secondary art form, and that is reflected in its funding. This frugality often means that jazz cannot properly afford to market itself in order to attract new and younger audiences. This, too, has a knock-on effect. The arts media are less inclined to treat jazz as a serious art form. And the under-funding of jazz does not just mean that jazz musicians will earn less money. The lack of a sustained awareness and marketing budget immediately puts jazz at a competitive disadvantage against the traditional arts and reinforces the bias against it when it comes to the next funding round. That has to change, but I suspect that it can only change from the top down.
	Jazz education has developed well in recent years. There are now many university courses, even a jazz degree course at the Royal Academy of Music; and for the aspiring jazz musician, jazz is now a recognised music qualification.
	Unfortunately, while there has been an increase in the scope and investment in jazz education, very little attention has been paid to its infrastructure. There seems to be little logic in spending large amounts of money developing jazz education while spending almost nothing at all on developing the opportunities for these excellent musicians after their graduation. As Steve Rubie, musician and owner of London's 606 Jazz Club, told me:
	"It is like training doctors and not building any hospitals".
	If the Royal Academy believes that it is worth developing British jazz talent, why does not the Arts Council?
	It is not only a question of funding. Licensing regulation is important too. The recent government licensing proposals have received a cool reception from the jazz world. Jazz owes a great deal of its popularity to the many pubs, bars and clubs that provide live music for their customers. Some make it a regular feature, but some prefer to limit live music to once a week or a couple of times a month. Under new provisions in the Licensing Bill, venues will have to pay for a public entertainment licence and their premises will have to be inspected if they want to provide live music. Many small premises, I fear, will decide that compliance is simply too onerous. The restrictions contained in the Bill will inevitably lead to a loss of playing and listening opportunities for jazz fans and musicians alike.
	These issues have already been debated in this House in relation to the Licensing Bill—but we are all too easily reminded that the benefits of government cash from one hand can so easily be neutered by the other, heavier hand of bureaucratic implementation.
	The scrapping of the "two in a bar" rule could have created many new opportunities for budding jazz musicians, but instead it will make life much more difficult. I sincerely hope that the Government will listen to those in the music industry and that in time they will reverse this legislation.
	Public funding alone does not create or inspire artistic talent—it never has, and I suspect it never will. But, when sensitively targeted, it can help to create a climate where those with the inclination and the talent are given a helping hand into the spotlight.

Viscount Falkland: My Lords, I sincerely thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for introducing the debate. The Minister may be feeling a sense of relief—which I share—in being released for a period from the rigours of the Licensing Bill to discuss the other responsibilities in her portfolio.
	I am extremely bullish and optimistic about the arts in exactly the same way as the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, and the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell. I have always been interested in the arts, and was encouraged to be so from an early age by an artist mother. I have never been depressed about the arts in this country. They have always been lively and challenging. I am getting older, and time is getting shorter. I am excited about what is happening now in all fields of the arts, and I cannot say that I am depressed because I am not that kind of person; I am a very optimistic person, except where Treasury funding is concerned. I feel that there is so much to do, see and appreciate in the relatively short time available that every morning is very exciting. However, the challenge in this country is to get more people to participate and to be involved in the arts.
	We have a tendency in this country, as we see in the cinema—the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, mentioned the Septieme Art (the seventh art)—to distinguish between what is amusing and entertaining and what is looked upon as serious art and the boring aspects. I believe that those distinctions, certainly in the cinema, are totally misplaced. It is one of the great drawbacks of British cinema that we have made a distinction between art and commercial cinema in the way that happens in the United States. But that is a debate for another day.
	As I drove to Newbury races the other day, listening to some Brahms and Mozart on Radio 3, I thought how much I was enjoying it. But in the morning I had enjoyed listening to Davie Bowie and to Serge Gainsbourg, two great favourites of mine in popular music. I see no great difficulty in having that kind of eclectic appreciation of the arts. I try to encourage my children to do likewise. I was encouraged to take that view—to be open-minded and to accept things that were sometimes difficult, surprising and worrying.
	The other day, I read a review in the Financial Times of a rather predictable television play in which the reviewer asked: when will the BBC start to be surprising? I agree with him in relation to television. The noble Lord, Lord Bragg, knows my views about the distinction between sound broadcasting and television. There is much more which is challenging culturally in sound broadcasting than there is in television, but perhaps that will change.
	I wish that, in schools and in the home, people would encourage children, in the way I was encouraged, to look at the visual arts in a certain way. You do not have to learn what they are about; you have to look at things and take in what you see and feel, and not be so wary of things that seem to be a change from the norm. After all, the arts in Europe have been through several great upheavals. The school of nineteenth century painting now known as Impressionism caused an enormous stir in terms of reaction and objection.
	It is the poetry and the quality of things that count. I refer to poetry in its widest sense. Children should be encouraged to see this when they look at a building or go to the cinema. I do not necessarily see the poetry in Tracey Emin's bed, but it is a surprising piece of work. I have heard her speak about it and I think I understand what she is trying to get at. But it is unreasonable and unintelligent for people to denigrate her as they have done. As my first wife, who is a painter, said on similar occasions, if they think it is so easy, why do they not do it themselves? People do not. To be creative, to carry out work and present it requires effort, commitment and talent. I am not saying that Tracey Emin does not have all those attributes. I do not understand her bed, and I doubt whether many noble Lords do, but it may be important. We ought to allow for that.
	The noble Baroness's right honourable friend in another place made some interesting remarks recently after her visit to Germany. She said that it was a pity that we could not have the same involvement with our culture as the Germans appear to have. I am a great admirer of German culture, but their culture is different. I love going to German museums and galleries. I admire how people quietly and intently look at pictures, and how they behave properly in the canteen. Their behaviour is different to that in this country.
	But art and culture have always been important to the Germans since they became a nation. After all, during the Third Reich, art and culture were enormously important to Hitler and his subordinates. It is a well documented fact that, of all the occupations and professions in the Third Reich, the highest proportion of Nazi party members were among museum directors and gallery owners. In the de-Nazification process, they admitted that there were a few opportunist rogues among them. But most were scholars who wanted to get on with their work. The easiest way was to become a member of the Nazi party. Many went on to be successful in the post-war years. That does not exonerate them for their behaviour, but it shows a particular commitment to scholarship in Germany. I had a German actress friend who performed in two Alan Ayckbourn plays in Germany, which I did not have the pleasure of seeing. It probably says more about the subtleties of Alan Ayckbourn than it does about German art. However, it is a different matter. I share the right honourable Member's concern. I think that, like me, she wants to get more people to participate and be involved. But I do not think that we will ever go down the German road.
	The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, talked about museums and galleries. I would be the first to support him and the noble Lord, Lord Moser, on the principle of free entry to museums. Yet we know that there is a funding problem. Treasury funding is unlikely to be forthcoming. Surely, there is another way to meet the needs of galleries and museums. Should we not further explore the approach taken in America of encouraging philanthropic involvement in various areas by rich, often multi-millionaire enthusiasts and giving them an incentive to help to finance such enterprises? The approach worked well in the United States, with benefactors donating to the state in exchange for tax douceur. We have not examined that area carefully enough. It is not good enough simply to say that free entry to museums is good, regardless of the fact that they do not have the money. Museums are expensive operations. I dare say that we could argue that, since we pay to enter foreign galleries, we might ask foreign tourists to do so. I am sure that they would be willing to do so if the case were presented in such a way. Having said that, I support everything that the two noble Lords said.
	I conclude by encouraging young and not-young people. When I was young, working in the City, I spent £75 on a painting by Anthony Eyton, a now prominent artist whom I much admire. He is now the resident artist at the Eden Project. He is one of the great current Romantic painters. He was not so well known in those days. Seventy-five pounds was a good deal for me to pay. The picture features Liverpool Street station before it was pulled down. It is on my wall, and I see it every morning. It always gives me a lift, because it is so full of colour and animation. A picture, not a reproduction, will give you more pleasure and will cost you less than a deposit, or even an instalment, on a motor car. Forty years after buying a painting, you will look at it and feel glad that you bought it. That is the attitude we should encourage in young people. We should encourage them to see that there is much for them in books, pictures, dance and all the arts in which we are so rich, and to take a slightly different look.

Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, on introducing this debate. The contribution of the arts in the cultural life of this country is, as my noble friend Lord Brooke said, a given. It is well documented, celebrated and frequently—quite rightly—revisited. The noble Lord, Lord Bragg, listed the Labour Ministers who have contributed to the arts since the Second World War, excluding all Conservative Ministers. I take exception to that. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Brooke and other Conservative Ministers for their contribution to the arts. They all worked tirelessly to persuade their colleagues—mostly from the Treasury—that the arts are special, as the noble Lord, Lord Bragg said, and that they require special attention and treatment for the benefit of all.
	There is a continuing, often controversial and lively, debate in many quarters, including the media, on what is meant by art and whether it contributes or detracts from the well-being of citizens. In the Sunday Times last week, an article entitled "Do we know our art from our elbow?" made much of the clash of opinion among those who believe that,
	"modern art now has no life outside its ability to create column inches and air minutes",
	and others who are surprised and undeterred by such antagonism, suggesting that looking at art is a matter of choice, in which case it matters not if the majority of the public dislike it.
	Talking of likes, I join my noble friend Lord Coe in his love of jazz. I regularly enjoy visits to Ronnie Scott's. I agree that jazz is often seen and treated as a poor relation, as illustrated by the relatively minimal subsidies afforded to it by the Arts Council. I assure my noble friend that the debate on the position of musicians in the context of the Licensing Bill is far from over. We will be robust at the next stage, so watch that space.
	I agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, said about the theatre. He referred to the urgent need for the repair and refurbishment of all our theatres and to high ticket prices, which deter many, particularly the young. Will the Minister respond to the noble Lord on the deficiencies of our theatres?
	I confirm our support for the principle of free access to museums and galleries. I agree wholeheartedly with the comments of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee in its recent report, which noble Lords referred to, that:
	"The museums and galleries in the UK constitute a treasure trove of artistic, cultural, historical and scientific artefacts and expertise. Together they represent a living resource that significantly enriches many people's lives and has the potential to do so for many more".
	If that potential can be realised by free access to our museums and galleries, we must do all that we can to support the policy. However, the House of Commons committee also concludes that the chief risks attached to this policy are,
	"the deterioration of the real value of public funding for these bodies and the reappearance of stresses and pressures on museums and galleries that caused some to introduce charging in the first place during the mid-1980s".
	We are pleased that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been able to report a 62 per cent overall rise in visitor numbers across the sector in the first seven months of the free access initiative compared with the same period in the previous year. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that in many instances people are still willing to pay for the arts. The noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, and my noble friend Lady Hooper referred to the continuing long queues at the Aztec exhibition.
	However, there is a problem. Research carried out by MORI suggests that 40 per cent of the population were not aware that admission charges had been dropped. Although there has been an increase in visitor numbers across the different social and economic groups, the biggest rise in visitor numbers has come from existing audiences. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee concludes that,
	"free admission on its own is unlikely to be effective in attracting significant numbers of new visitors from the widest range of socio-economic and ethnic groups".
	We have heard much about the funding situation this afternoon. In essence, we understand that for most institutions the settlement amounts to a 1.5 per cent increase for 2004–05 and a 2.5 per cent increase overall for 2005–06. Is that enough?
	There are real criticisms on funding. As the noble Lord, Lord Moser, said, our arts remain seriously under-funded. The British Museum and the Natural History Museum are both set to suffer reductions in the real value of their grant in aid in 2004–05 and 2005–06. When interviewed by the House of Commons committee, the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, was critical of the funding levels. He said:
	"The question is can we operate effectively to the maximum public benefit and I think the answer has to be, sadly, no".
	The noble Lord, Lord Moser, said that eloquently today.
	The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, also used the example of the Natural History Museum having to spend £500,000 more than in the past on temporary staff to cope with cleaning and upkeep as a result of the increased visitor numbers. There are considerable knock-on effects to the new initiative that are causing real funding concerns to our museums. The British Museum has seen gallery closures, shorter hours and even a strike against staff cuts. Unlike rivals that charged and were paid £28 million in compensation, the British Museum, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery held out against charging, losing money as a result.
	The House of Commons committee report said that museums and galleries in the United Kingdom must receive "sufficient funding" if they are to maintain free admission. The report also recommended "financial flexibility", allowing freedom to borrow cash for income-generating projects. The report said that,
	"since the Government has called the tune, it must keep paying the piper".
	In addition, the committee looked at extending the provision whereby free local authority museums have been able to recover VAT for a number of years, as a result of Section 33 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994. As the Museums Association pointed out, this leaves the university museums, with their long tradition of free access, as the only group of publicly funded museums still burdened with the perverse incentive to charge. The association said that the provisions made for the national museums could be extended to the university museums without any need for primary legislation and that the estimated cost to the Treasury would be about £500,000 a year. This the association described as "affordable for the Exchequer", but of,
	"significant benefit for the museums concerned".
	The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, the Minister for the Arts, told the committee that the department had made it clear that the VAT provision was ring fenced for the national collections and that, while she recognised the case for extension, the Treasury would argue that the issues raised would be,
	"very difficult to deal with in relation to EU rules".
	The committee believed a much clearer explanation was required from the Government if it was to be convinced by this statement by the Minister. Will she give us a clearer explanation this evening? This is a very important aspect of the committee's findings. I recognise that at least some members of the committee were focusing seriously on possible channels for our museums and galleries.
	In contrast, I draw the attention of noble Lords to what the honourable Member for Stourbridge, Ms Shipley, said while questioning Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum. She asked whether,
	"this is an argument for saying that you should open every evening and that you should charge because they are working people and they can pay".
	When it was suggested to the honourable Member that some who work are on low pay, in which case price might be an inhibitor, she went on to say that,
	"it would be interesting to know whether there is any research to back that up".
	That seems to mean research into whether there are a number of working people on low incomes for whom museum entry fees may be an inhibitor.
	The committee also recommended that the current process for allocating funds, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, which was described as "opaque" by museums, should be modernised, "as far as is realistic".
	There was also much concern about regional museums. Given the shortness of time, I cannot refer to all that was said, although there was concern about the Renaissance in the Regions report, which recommended a new integrated framework for museums in the regions based on a network of regional hubs. I concur with the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, who pointed out the interesting anomaly that the Tate Britain is free, but the Tate in St Ives is not. On the regions, the Association of Independent Museums is reported as saying:
	"Our members have seen a dip in visitor numbers; some are having a difficult time. The scheme is threatening the livelihood of some attractions by diverting money to the big ones".
	Many more points were made. As the committee decided, it is clearly premature to draw firm conclusions about the long-term impact of free admission. It is important for the Government to look at length at issues such as length of stay—known as the dwell time of visitors—which we understand is reducing. I agree with the House of Commons committee that this phenomenon makes sense, given that free access removes the very British approach—indeed, it is probably universal—to get one's money's worth.
	I also believe that much of our combined efforts to encourage people from all walks of life and communities should focus largely on the young. I very much like the reference that the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, made to funding all school visits. The noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, also referred to that. I would take a lot of convincing to agree that we can or should have the arrogance to believe that we should try to change the cultural interests of adults, be it through political correctness or social engineering—or a combination of both. After all, surely the joy of the arts comes down to freedom of choice. Our aim should be to inspire the young to want to participate.

Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Harrison has given me the opportunity today to reiterate this Government's commitment to the arts and culture. I shall try to deal with some of his many questions and those of all the other speakers. I know that noble Lords will sympathise with me, because in the short time available to me I shall not be able to deal with them all. I shall write to those whose questions I cannot answer. Some speakers focused mainly on museums; others focused on the arts more generally. I shall try to cover both.
	All too seldom do we have the opportunity to talk about this important subject. It is a welcome break from talking about licensing. We do not celebrate enough the work of our innovative and vibrant artistic and cultural scene; we do so rather more for sport. I think back to last year, when so many of us were focused on the World Cup. A few weeks after the World Cup had packed up, two other great British teams went to play at the Sapporo stadium on different nights. Those great British teams were two of our finest orchestras—the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia. They played challenging programmes and gave world-class performances. They flew the flag for British culture. At the time I wondered what it would take to get us to applaud those examples of real excellence and achievement, as we applauded our national football team's efforts on the field. Sometimes in this country we are too diffident in celebrating our cultural achievement.
	As Arts Minister, I am not a critic, nor do I run an opera house, theatre or gallery. Much as I would like to, I will not engage with my noble friend Lord Bragg's interesting comments on the theory of totalitarian art. My job is to put in place the conditions in which culture can flourish and artists can express themselves and push forward the boundaries of their art. I am completely unashamed about why we do this. We do it for exactly the reason given by my noble friend Lord Moser when he quoted from John F Kennedy. Indeed, I would have used the same quote, but my former professor has stolen from his student's quote—it used to be the other way round, with students quoting from their professors. What he said about the benefits that the arts bring us all is enormously important, and I cannot improve on the words of John F Kennedy or my noble friend Lord Moser. As politicians, we should not be afraid of saying that.
	We fund culture primarily for what it is in itself, and then for what it can do for our wider programmes, such as education, reducing crime, and promoting the health and well-being of individuals and communities. Research shows us that children who grow up surrounded by cultural objects, or in families where culture is at the centre of their lives, do better in exams. Exposure to culture can raise aspirations among young people, improve their self-confidence, increase their life chances and give them something that stays with them all their lives. I absolutely endorse what Jennie Lee said all those years ago. We have also shown that, together with sporting activity, access to cultural activity can help to reduce crime, through projects such as our Splash Extra scheme. Those are just two examples of how culture is, and should be, at the heart of everything we do as a government—a core investment in the social capital of young people.
	How do we create the conditions for culture to thrive? First, we provide the money. Funding for the arts fell into what can only be described as a state of serious disrepair in the 1980s and in the first half of the 1990s. It was regarded almost as an extravagant luxury that did not need to be encouraged. I was hugely grateful for the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. He was as honest as always in admitting that his old friend, the late Lord Ridley, decided not to take on the job of Minister for the Arts because the government of whom he was a part were simply not providing enough funding for them.
	When we came into power we stuck with the previous government's spending plans and therefore presided over a cut in arts funding, which was something that the Conservatives had decided to do—and not something we will ever want to repeat. However, we have dealt with the terrible legacy that we were left. By the time of the end of the next spending review period, in the arts we will have increased funding from £189 million in 1997 to £411 million in 2005. That is an effective doubling of funding in eight years.

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving way. In defence of the previous Conservative government, does she acknowledge the fantastic contribution to the arts made as a result of the establishment of the national lottery, which was the former Prime Minister's initiative?

Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, of course I acknowledge that, as when we were in opposition we supported both the introduction of the national lottery and that it should be used to support work in the arts. However, as the noble Lord knows, much of the lottery funding went on capital projects. It is extremely important that we should have money for current spending.
	The extra money that we have put in is being used to good effect. We put in £25 million to theatres as part of the theatre review, and audiences are increasing, work is diversifying and there is a feeling that British theatre can enter a new era of creativity and innovation. I hope that my noble friend Lord Sheldon, who mentioned the theatre, will accept the claims that I make on that subject.
	Throughout the arts scene, the lottery has produced some stunning buildings, with stunning work going on inside those buildings, but we have not finished yet. When the Coliseum refurbishment is complete, English National Opera will have for the first time a world-class opera house. We will transform the South Bank Centre, beginning with the Festival Hall, creating a really bold, world-class centre for the arts on one of the most important sites in central London. Again, that was neglected for almost 20 years.
	Several speakers, including my noble friends Lord Sheldon and Lord Moser, rightly referred to the tremendous challenge of giving children what my noble friend Lord Moser called a "foothold" in the joys of the arts. In education we have introduced Creative Partnerships, a £40 million pilot in 16 deprived areas, bringing culture back into the heart of the lives of children and young people in the schools taking part. With our new money, that will expand to more than £70 million and will at least double the number of areas involved. Already this project is making a substantial difference to the lives of young people. It deserves our support.
	We will also widen access with Culture Online, which will spend £13 million during the next two years to create between 20 and 40 projects that will increase access to arts and culture through the use of new technologies. It will work with a range of cultural and commercial organisations to present the nation's cultural heritage in new and imaginative ways.
	Few speakers referred to the Arts Council, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Coe, who berated it for not providing as much money as he would like for jazz. As he knows, we work with the Arts Council on the arm's length principle, and do not instruct it on what it should spend on individual art forms or organisations. It is spending something like £1.7 million on funding for jazz, which is an increase, as the noble Lord recognised.
	We have reorganised the Arts Council this year. It is now a truly national organisation with the regions at its heart, decentralising its functions and reducing the number of staff at the centre. I know that Gerry Robinson, the Arts Council chairman, is determined that the reorganisation of the Arts Council delivers a better service to the arts. In the next three years, more than £20 million will be taken from administration and given to arts organisations. We want the new Arts Council to be bold and brave, as well as upholding the highest standards of accountability and probity, and to make tough decisions about funding where necessary. When there is a reason to make tough decisions, it should not be afraid to do so.
	The spending review's £75 million increase for the arts was ring-fenced by the Chancellor, reflecting the high importance attached to the arts by the Government. First and foremost, we want the money to be used as far as possible to put right some of the damage done over the years to the ability of our institutions and artists to aspire to be world class in everything they do. That they have not given up trying, despite the difficulties that they have faced, is a tribute to the tenacity of artists and the institutions in which they practise all over the country. We want the Arts Council to use the extra money to reinvigorate excellence, energy and innovation.
	In funding world-class artistic endeavour, we want to put in place strategies to ensure that that endeavour really is accessible to as many people as possible. That means continuing the work that has already been started to pull down barriers to attendance and participation, building the audiences of tomorrow, and giving as many people as possible an opportunity to experience the transformational experience and inspiration of the arts.
	Of course we want to maximise and exploit the contribution of the arts to core policies including education, health, crime, regeneration and the well-being of the population at large. It is up to my department to make culture available and to fly the flag for culture within government. Various speakers asked about the work that we are doing with our colleagues in the educational world. We are working very closely with the Department for Education and Skills on creative partnerships, museums education, music education and dance and drama awards.
	I have not had time to rehearse the many other contributions that culture makes to the life of the nation. Culture is, for example, a driver for regeneration. None of the speakers mentioned the competition to select the UK's nomination for European Capital of Culture 2008. I think that that competition has revealed the extent to which a number of our cities are absolutely committed to using culture to improve the quality of life for those who live in those cities. I am absolutely delighted by that commitment.
	On a perhaps related point, culture—as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and my noble friend Lord Bragg mentioned—also provides a spur to tourism. I do not have time to give all the figures, but we know that, when questioned, substantial numbers of people say that they come to this country because they want to visit our heritage sites, museums and galleries and our performing arts. Those are three of the most important factors that people cite as reasons for coming to this country.
	As much as our performing arts institutions, we believe that our museums and galleries have an important role to play in the cultural life of this country. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, that our investment in our national museums and galleries is, per museum, among the highest in Europe—greater than, for example, in Germany, Sweden and France. We believe that everyone should have access to our great national treasures. Free admission is the cornerstone of that policy, but the overall aim is to broaden access. Although that will not be achieved by free admission alone, no one can seriously doubt that free admission is a major step in the right direction.
	Let us briefly look at the evidence. Back in 1997–98, there were about 24 million visitors to our national museums and galleries. Since the introduction of free access, visitor numbers have increased to more than 30 million. In the 12 months since 1st December 2001, the number of visitors to the former charging museums has increased by 70 per cent—some 5 million more than in the previous year. The number of child visitors has increased by an even larger number, and the number of visitors from among those over 60 has increased by 93 per cent.
	I therefore think it reasonable to claim that free admission is making a very significant impact on diversity. The latest returns from our sponsored museums and galleries show that, following the introduction of free access, the number of visitors from the C2, D and E socio-economic groups has increased by 30 per cent at the former charging museums. We need to do more to encourage greater diversity of social mix among those who visit our museums and galleries. I could cite many examples of the way in which our national museums and galleries are working to achieve just that, but I do not have time to do so today.
	A number of sceptics in this debate have challenged our ability to sustain the costs of free access to our national museums. We are committed to doing so as part of our total funding package for our national museums. By 2005–06, their funding will amount to nearly £300 million per annum, which is a substantial increase. Again, I was surprised by some of the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe. The report of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport showed that, since 1997–98, there has been a 19 per cent real-terms funding increase for those institutions compared with a decrease of 0.4 per cent in the previous decade. So I think that we are making very important progress in that respect.
	Various speakers commented on the report of my noble friend Lord Evans entitled Renaissance in the Regions. The Government greatly welcomed that report, which is the foundation for the development of our current policy for regional museums. There are two main thrusts to the policy. The first is to provide, through Resource, additional financial support for regional museums. The second is designed to build on and develop effective partnerships between national and regional museums. The focus will be on the development of specific educational projects; on making national cultural treasures more accessible to people living in the regions through support for, for example, touring exhibitions and loans of objects; and on investment that strengthens the role of museums in the regions in engaging their local communities more effectively. I certainly believe in assisting the quality of the curatorial work in those museums.
	What I must be clear about, however, is that our policy for museums in the regions is about better delivery of cultural policy as part of a more integrated and coherent approach. It is certainly not about greater centralisation in how regional museums are run. It is also not our intention to take over responsibility from others for the provision of their core funding. Similarly, it is a matter for their governing authorities to decide whether they wish to offer free admission. Many already do so.
	I think that it was the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, who specifically asked when the hubs would receive their extra money. That is of course a matter for Resource, which is in discussion with them. However, I can say that it will be very soon.
	I began by suggesting that, as a nation, we seem a little reticent about talking up the arts. I am glad to say that today, on the whole, we have talked up the arts as we should. I do not think that we can overestimate the importance of their contribution to our society. The arts and culture are flourishing in this country. Indeed, I believe that they are flourishing here as they have never done before. We can be immensely proud of the achievement of our artists and our great cultural institutions. I want to see a continuing, vigorous debate on their importance. Once again, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for introducing this debate and all noble Lords who participated.

Lord Harrison: My Lords, in seeking to withdraw the Motion, I recommend to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville—if he is intent on fulfilling his lifetime ambition of seeing all 37 plays in the Shakespeare canon—that he should see "Edward III" which is now showing at the Gielgud Theatre.
	I thank the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, for all his digs, archaeological and otherwise. I thank the Minister and all others who contributed to the debate which, in the best traditions of all our art galleries and museums, has been stimulating, educational and good fun. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Children

Baroness Massey of Darwen: rose to call attention to the need for the co-ordination of health and social services to improve the life chances of children and young people; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, I am delighted to have secured this debate. I am pleased that it has attracted such a broad array of talented and committed speakers and support from many noble Lords who cannot be here today. I hope that the debate will be useful in pulling together concerns about children's services which seem to be ever present.
	I must declare an interest as the co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children which, through its very dynamic membership, consistently raises issues related to the welfare of children. We maintain that all children deserve the best possible chance in life, not because they represent future generations but because they are children.
	I shall focus on two services: health and social services. I shall give an overview of some concerns. I know that other noble Lords will be more specific and will give examples from their own interests and experience. I shall refer to co-ordination at national level, in government, and to action at local level. We know that practice is variable in different parts of the country. We know that there is much good practice about and many dedicated people. It is when things go badly wrong that there is an outcry and calls for improvement. The distressing case of Victoria Climbie is an example of what can go wrong.
	I shall give examples of good co-ordination and some problems. I shall suggest to the Minister, who always listens, that four things might be considered to improve services. The first is the systematic involvement of children and young people in planning services. The second is looking at the needs and entitlement of children when making laws and policies—child impact analysis, as it is sometimes called. The third is ensuring that laws and policies are translated into action at a community level with community involvement. The fourth is the need, in my view, for a children's commissioner.
	But, as a preamble, I relate some basic facts. The population of nought to 15 year-olds is just over 12 million. They have complex needs. In many ways the well-being of children and young people is improving and most young people, surveys show, regard themselves as being healthy. However, one in three children are still living in poverty, up to one in 10 have some kind of mental disorder and around 400,000 are living in need. More are being raised in single parent families. The number looked after by local authorities has risen by 13 per cent since 1994. Numbers of disabled children are increasing and they are living longer. The number of asylum seeking families has increased. Their children need services too and clear information must be available to them. Eighty per cent of children in prison have suffered abuse and neglect; 50 per cent have been on child protection registers; well over half have been in care. Youth suicide gives cause for concern.
	Much has been done by government, by local authorities and by the voluntary sector to improve the life chances of children, for example, the Children's Fund, Sure Start, Quality Protects, Connexions, health action zones, early years development and childcare partnerships, and by increases in regulatory standards and improved performance management. The 2002 spending review included a requirement to reform local and national infrastructure and simplify funding. It included a major investment and reform programme to enhance opportunities and services for young people. A network of children's centres is envisaged. A national service framework for child health is in progress. A Green Paper on children at risk, to which the all-party group contributed, is due out for consultation. Public service agreements for children across government departments were set in 2000. The Children and Young People's Unit is charged with developing a strategy and has consulted widely. But challenges remain and these relate substantially to how co-ordination of effort is encouraged and how systems can support dedicated people. Some would say that the more initiatives there are, the greater the difficulty of co-ordination and the greater the effort required. National and local maps of services for children are very complex.
	The Cabinet Committee on Children and Young People's Services has, as its terms of reference, the co-ordination of policies to prevent poverty and under-achievement among children and young people, to monitor effectiveness of delivery and to work with the voluntary sector to build new alliances for children. This demonstrates extremely powerful willingness to integrate effort, and the voluntary sector's engagement is welcome. Its dedication has provided over many years a watchdog role, an advocacy role and examples of sound practice.
	A report last year from the Association of Directors of Social Services recognises that improvements are being made but also refers to the challenges and states:
	"The focus must be on outcomes for children, thinking about children's services around agencies and funding systems to focusing on functions that cut across many organisations".
	The Climbie inquiry called for greater efficiency within, and better co-ordination between, services dealing with children, with national standards, training, resourcing and local leadership being called into question. New national and local structures are recommended. Lack of co-ordination of services is a common complaint in reports such as the interdepartmental childcare review, the Kennedy report and many voluntary sector reports. Departments within services sometimes appear to be unaware of what other departments are doing, let alone other organisations. As the Home Secretary said last week,
	"The only sure fire way to break down the barriers between these services is to remove the barriers altogether".
	I suggest that that will take an enormous amount of good will, flexibility and determination. The models being considered at community level, for example, children's trusts, drawing on expertise from community, private and voluntary sectors, may well help, but the issues of co-ordination will remain. That concern is borne out by experience at a local level. An analysis of health improvement programmes between 2000 to 2002 by the five major children's charities points out that,
	"they demonstrated so clearly the fragmentation of children's services. Faced with a plethora of plans and initiatives, some addressing children and young people specifically, others including them within some generic provision, many lacking targets and milestones, it becomes very difficult to determine whether health needs are being met".
	The area of child and adolescent mental health provides a good example of the challenges for co-ordination. The series of relationships which should work for effectively dealing with a problem is complex. GPs and health visitors need awareness to spot a problem. The relationship between adult mental health services and children's mental health services needs to be managed. Who is responsible for the 17 year-old who arrives in accident and emergency with a severe drug problem or who has taken an overdose?
	Mental health is an important element across the whole of social services, from helping families to care for children, through residential care and adoption proceedings. However, child and adolescent mental health care services are inundated with needs they cannot meet. Co-operation with social services becomes strained. A worker may not know that other services are dealing with the same child, may not pass on information and may not co-ordinate interventions. Competing objectives may be a problem. Preventing family breakdown is a different objective to coping with an individual's mental disorder, even though they may overlap. The issue of confidentiality may pose barriers. Some areas have developed systems for involving all agencies so that they can share information about, for example, funding streams, can explore pressures on the different services and work out ways of keeping one another informed.
	National Children's Homes points out that it sometimes finds it difficult at a local level to identify key people and make links, for example, in primary care trusts. Many voluntary organisations see themselves as excluded from the health agenda. They are concerned that issues related to children do not get enough priority within PCTs.
	An emphasis on effective services is not about taking over from families. Effective services do not negate the need for effective parenting, which involves the care and supervision of children. I do not want to precede the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, in a few weeks. Many effective services include parenting programmes as part of their remit, teaching skills of parenting, information about services and how to best get help from professionals.
	Effective services also consult young people and families about their concerns and involve them in planning, delivery and monitoring of services. Responses to a consultation on family services by the National Family and Parenting Institute showed support for such involvement and for mergers between children's services and family services. We need simple and understandable models to be understood by all—politicians, local managers, professionals, parents and children.
	Sure Start programmes provide many examples of collaborative working across services with children and families of many cultures. For example, in Hammersmith advice is given to families through several agencies, such as family support workers, on benefits, childcare and local services. Integration is such that issues picked up by one professional, such as a child psychologist, can be quickly shared with others, such as health visitors.
	Cornwall social services has, for many years, had a joint consultancy team of experienced professionals from different agencies involved in child protection, including a social work consultant, paediatricians, a health visitor and a psychologist. The team also delivers training.
	Overarching structures are essential at both national and local level. A children and families board with representation at Cabinet level and local structures has been suggested. Sure Start initiatives could be built on. However, what would give credibility and status to services for children and young people is a children's commissioner, independent of government, who might have a small staff with local representation, perhaps based on government office locations. Such a post would have the role of influencing policy and practice on children, advocating for children, undertaking investigations, helping to share good practice, monitoring legislation and consulting on proposed legislation. That would ensure that the impact on children of national and local policy could be examined.
	It is perhaps ironic that later today we will consider the order for Northern Ireland on a children's commissioner. Wales has had a Children's Commissioner since 2001. The first annual report from that commissioner is very powerful, and demonstrates to me the potential for such an office to raise awareness of issues, and help professionals and organisations carry out dialogues and set strategic aims. I know that my noble friend Lady Gale will expand on that, so I shall not say more about it. Some local authorities also have their own commissioners, so there is much on which to build.
	I believe that we are at a vital and promising time for children. There is commitment from the Government; there is good policy and good practice; there are exciting initiatives. All those are and will remain less effective without co-ordination between services. I suggest that a children's commissioner could assist that process.
	Of necessity, I have been able only to sketch out some ideas and highlight my particular areas of concern for the Minister. They are the involvement of children and young people, delivery at community level, child impact analysis, and the creation of a children's commissioner. I look forward to hearing the views of other noble Lords and of the Minister. The issue needs urgent and continued attention. I think that we have the will and creativity to improve the situation for children and families, but we must maintain vigilance, creativity and advocacy for a group who need us to work on their behalf. The House has shown its concern for children in the past, and I am convinced that it will continue to do so. I beg to move for Papers.

Lord Rea: My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Massey on her well-timed choice of subject, and on her clearly expressed and constructively critical speech.
	So much legislation has been passed on the subject in recent years, with so much guidance and so many reports written, that it is difficult to cut a meaningful pathway through it all in a single relatively short speech. Of course, the Victoria Climbie case is uppermost in our minds at the moment. While mentioning that case, I should say that I am very sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Laming, was not able to take part in the debate. I am glad that my noble friend Lady Massey has broadened the terms of the debate so that we can discuss a wide range of factors that affect a child's life chances—not just those that help children in danger to avoid death, but those that enable children to achieve as near as possible to their full potential, as circumstances allow.
	Of course, health and social services do not provide the basic physical and social fabric that underlies the health and full development of children. Those services can be regarded as watchdogs to detect the early stages when things start going wrong, to prevent further damage, and to take steps to repair any harm that may have already occurred. Good physical and mental health and the social climate that maximises the life chances of children in the widest sense depend on many factors.
	I want to summarise from a document called Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families, which was published by the Department for Education and Employment and the Home Office in 2000. The necessary factors favouring normal healthy development include, first, a stable and emotionally warm family background. That does not necessarily mean that the parents should be the biological parents. As well as that as the basis, there should be adequate housing, heating, clothing, nutrition, regular and sufficient family income, education and healthcare.
	That is quite a package. However, it is one that the majority of children in the developing world now enjoy, but by no means all, as my noble friend pointed out. Infant and child mortality is now at levels so low that 40 or 50 years ago they would have seemed unachievable. Sadly, in many countries the majority of the child population lack most of those desirable supports, other than that of their families. If family support is solid, which it nearly always is, it is surprising how resilient children in the developing world are at withstanding the other forms of deprivation. They do so at a cost, of course.
	In Victoria Climbie's case, she lacked not only a loving family in France and the UK, but every other supporting factor that I listed. It is a sad fact that a systematic assessment of the full extent of her deprivation was never made. That brings home the need for all practitioners in the caring professions to be critically aware of the part that social factors may play in generating the problems presented to them. Although the importance of those social factors is now stressed in training, attention in practice tends to focus on the presenting problem, which is often a physical symptom in medical practice or a request for administrative help from a social worker. The underlying family or social factors may be ignored or sidelined. However, attitudes are improving.
	The inquiry headed by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, has followed the tradition of a number of others that have analysed the train of events preceding and leading up to a tragedy. One of the most famous of those was the Ritchie report on the murder of Jonathan Zito by Christopher Clunis some 10 years ago. In both that case and the Climbie case, there was a malfunction of the health and/or social services, usually at the interface between the two. In each case, there is a sad story of, for example, inadequate record-keeping, failure to pass on vital information and "passing the buck" without checking that the proper transfer of responsibility has taken place. In the case of such inquiries, those cumulative failures led to murder by, or of, a vulnerable person.
	However, those tragedies are only the tip of the iceberg. The searchlight that those inquiries bring to bear on working practices is focused on one case—very much a worst case. The reports give an insight into the system—or lack of a system—the morale of those working in the service and the difficulties that they face. However, mistakes and ineffective working practices do not take place only in Ealing, Brent or Haringey, where Victoria Climbie lived. Some of the errors are understandable—perhaps inevitable—when staff are working under high pressure. In some areas, as my noble friend pointed out, better liaison has been achieved; that is usually due to better management, and morale is much higher, even in some deprived areas.
	However, I fear that Dr Julian Tudor Hart's "inverse care" law may still be operating, with less good care in more deprived areas. One of the difficulties is that in those areas there is often a rapid turnover of population and a high proportion of immigrants with language and cultural differences. The need therefore is for health and social services to be not only as well staffed as in more affluent areas but very much better staffed because the problems are more intractable and time consuming as well as more numerous. The work is extremely labour intensive as well as complex, so the need for better management and cohesion, which was advocated in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, is particularly strong.
	My noble friend on the Front Bench knows only too well what I have been talking about and what the noble Lord, Lord Laming, advocates; it is a very familiar story. To be fair, since this Government came to power, a huge amount of work has gone into legislation, guidance and reports that are aimed at improving the lives of families on low income and the welfare of their children. Doubtless, there would have been more tragedies if that work had not been set in motion. The difficulty is that while bad news is big news, good news does not usually reach the headlines. The fact that needy families have been rehoused, that immigrant children are doing well at school and that more single mothers are working, is confined to the back pages of the broadsheets, to special documentaries or to academic papers.
	As a measure of what has been done, the appendix to Health for all Children by Dr David Hall and Dr David Ellman—its fourth edition was recently published—lists a positive cascade of government activities that have taken place since 1997. Under the heading, "Policy framework, legislation and policy", it lists: four special government units, 10 cross-cutting policy initiatives, six education policy initiatives, 11 health policy initiatives, four social care policy initiatives and six major reports, totalling 41 in all. All of them are relevant, wholly or partly, to the care of children in the community. That list does not include numerous guidance circulars to local government and health authorities and trusts. The criticism of all this is that such initiatives, while often issued after a consultation period, are "top down", and those working at the coal-face sometimes feel snowed under by the sheer volume of advice and guidance that they receive.
	I turn very briefly to some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, in his report. Many of his recommendations are aimed at improving working practices at the basic level and they have the ring of authenticity, as one would expect from someone whose life has been concerned with the social services. I shall mention one or two of his comments. Paragraph 1.21 stated that,
	"the principal failure . . . was the result of widespread organisational malaise".
	Paragraph 1.27 stated that,
	"it was dispiriting to listen to the 'buck passing' from those who attempted to justify their positions".
	Paragraph 1.28 stated that,
	"there were too many examples of those in senior positions attempting to justify their work in terms of bureaucratic activity rather than in outcomes for people".
	There are many other cogent comments apart from the formal recommendations.
	Finally, I would like to discuss in a few sentences the recommendations regarding training. The need for all social workers, paediatricians and general practitioners not only to receive initial training in the multidisciplinary aspects of child protection, but also to receive continuing education is emphasised. It is suggested that primary care practice staff should if possible also be appropriately trained.
	Recommendation 14 is particularly important because it recognises that national training programmes for doctors, nurses, social workers and the police should include,
	"effective joint working between each of these professional groups".
	That brings me to my last point. I have mentioned in a previous debate the organisation known as CAIPE—the Centre for the Advancement of Inter-Professional Education. CAIPE holds that students or trainees of professions who are later going to collaborate will benefit from joint training in appropriate parts of their curriculum. That particularly applies to doctors and dentists training jointly with nurses, social workers and other members of the caring professions. Preliminary evaluation shows that this can lead to a greater appreciation of the different roles of each profession and better subsequent joint working. The system is now in a trial phase at Southampton University and medical school. I advise my noble friend to send someone from his department to have a look at that programme. There is no area in which it would be more appropriate and necessary than in relation to child protection.
	Finally, I would like to say that I support my noble friend's call for a children's commissioner both at central level and locally.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, for giving us the opportunity of debating this important topic. The topic can make the difference between life and death for a child. I intend to focus my remarks on child death and the physical abuse of children. It is a very appropriate time, as noble Lords have said, for such a debate, given that we have recently seen the publication of the report by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, into the events that led up to the death of little Victoria Climbie.
	The Government have shown very good intentions and displayed much excellent action with regard to the well-being of children, although there is always more to be done. One of their best actions was to set up the Children and Young People's Unit, with its focus on the child. I believe that, when we go wrong in our services to children, it is usually because that focus on the child has slipped and attention has been paid instead to financial expediency, bureaucratic structures or professional territorialism.
	The premise of the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, is correct. We must have services that are linked in a real way, with real understanding and sharing of information, or the same tragedy will happen over and over again. However, I am sad to say that I do not believe that the proposals laid out in the Laming report go anywhere near far enough. I am not sure whether that is because the remit did not go far enough. The fact remains that opportunities have been missed for some reason or other. There are, of course, many excellent and hard-hitting aspects of the report, which I welcome, including the proposal for a children and families board at ministerial level. That puts children's welfare at the top of the political agenda, which is a very good thing. I also welcome a national agency for children and families and the new regulator, the General Social Care Council, which has recently come into existence. Moreover, I welcome the 24-hour telephone referral number and the prioritisation and fast response standards proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, along with many other proposals in the report.
	However, I have three major disappointments to register about the report. I was most concerned to see that the noble Lord, Lord Laming, expects a civil servant—the chief executive of the new agency for children and families—to take on the role of a children's commissioner for England. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Laming, that shows a deep misunderstanding of the role of the commissioner. How could such a person be independent of government and make severe criticisms if necessary? How could such a person focus entirely on the rights of children when he would also have responsibility for families? The two are not the same and their interests sometimes diverge quite markedly.
	Why should England have a children's commissioner considerably less powerful than the one in Wales and much less powerful than those proposed for Scotland and Northern Ireland? Do English children have less need of protection? Of course not. We still have dozens of child deaths from abuse and neglect in England every year, which brings me nicely to my next disappointment.
	Although the noble Lord, Lord Laming, addressed the issues of management accountability and performance monitoring thoroughly, he did not address the issues of how professionals should work together more effectively on the ground and how we learn the lessons from child deaths. He proposes a feasibility study into a national children's database covering all children under 16. Much more useful would be a systematic review of all child deaths so that we can learn the lessons of why children die from abuse and so inform future policy and practice.
	A permanent database of all child neglect and abuse cases would be much more focussed on the problem and would be a better use of resources. The Government should also establish multi-disciplinary child death review teams on a statutory basis to provide consistent and thorough analysis of child deaths. Those would be one of the many ways in which health and social care professionals, working together could cast a light on the problems that would really make a difference.
	That brings me to how professionals can work together more effectively day to day. We really do need multi-agency child safeguarding teams to improve professional communication and joint working—the things that broke down in the Climbie case and many previously. How many children have to die and how many worthy reports will highlight the need for that before action is taken?
	My third disappointment is the fact that the Laming report did not propose scrapping the archaic law allowing reasonable chastisement of children. As I said earlier, that may be because the remit did not go that far and allow the noble Lord, Lord Laming, to make such a proposal. However, many people believe that that defence cannot be used effectively to protect people who have really abused children. They would be wrong. In one case in May 2001, a father, who hit his four year-old son across the back with a belt three or more times causing bruising for refusing to write his name, was acquitted on that basis at Southwark Crown Court.
	In 1998 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that UK law does not protect children adequately. It found that repeated caning of a young boy by his stepfather breached his rights to protection from inhuman and degrading punishment. That stepfather had successfully used the 1860 legal defence of reasonable chastisement in an English court to excuse his behaviour.
	To quote David Hinchliffe MP, chair of the Health Select Committee in another place,
	"We cannot go on kidding ourselves that there is no link between the fact that UK law still allows children to be hit and the fact that large numbers of children suffer physical abuse, sometimes with tragic consequences".
	Previous inquiries into child assault deaths have failed to recommend law reform. It is sad that the recent report has made the same mistake. Child protection professionals are unanimous about that. The Children's Rights Alliance submission to the Victoria Climbie inquiry observes:
	"Future social historians will ask with astonishment why the dozens of official inquiries into battered children that preceded this one did not make such a simple and obvious proposal".
	In many of the recent high profile cases it is clear that discipline was a factor in the abuse. Manning said that Victoria Climbie's abuse began with little smacks and Kouao told the inquiry that there was nothing wrong with smacking. I do not support the Government's belief that all parents know the difference between abuse and discipline. The Government's own research found that one third of ordinary parents who hit escalate from mild slaps to "severe punishment". That is not to say that everyone who gives a mild slap to a child will become a child abuser.
	Changing the law to give children equal protection to adults would support the health and social services professionals trying so hard to work together. It would empower ordinary people to speak out about child abuse when they see it and use the 24-hour helpline that the noble Lord, Lord Laming, proposes. Every system, however good, breaks down sometimes. The key to success is having a good fallback system. In my view, the general public are the fallback system for health and social services as far as child abuse is concerned but we must make it clear to the public what are the standards that will best protect children. That is why the law needs to be clear and unambiguous. The experience of other countries that have banned physical punishment of children has shown that public reporting of clearly abusive behaviour increases when the law is changed. That means that intervention can happen earlier.
	This debate is about what we can do to improve the life chances of children so we must learn lessons from the successes of other countries. In Sweden, in the 10 years following the ban on all physical punishment, vigorously supported by parental support and information, not one single child died as a result of parental physical abuse. In England and Wales, at least one child is killed by a parent or carer each week. We must be doing something wrong. I find it difficult to understand why the Government cannot see that.
	Other organisations. including the NSPCC, of which I am a voluntary ambassador, and Africans Unite Against Child Abuse (AFRUCA), also pressed the noble Lord, Lord Laming, to propose law reform in their submissions to his inquiry. Phillip Noyes, policy director of the NSPCC said:
	"We won't stop the punches and kicks if we continue to tolerate the smacks and slaps. Hitting children is wrong—full stop—and the law should clearly say so".
	Debbie Ariyo, executive director of Africans Unite Against Child Abuse, said:
	"AFRUCA firmly believes a change in the law against the physical punishment of children would help protect them from potential abusers. In particular, we are convinced such a law would significantly reduce the risks that African children and all children face and encourage more people to act when they see children being abused. This is an issue we hope to see in the debate about the Climbie Inquiry Report".
	There is already a war on: the war against child abuse. Our defence is vision and resourcing. Investing in the prevention of child abuse will reap dividends far greater than any of us can imagine in alleviation of human suffering as well as ensuring that all our children grow up to be healthy, law-abiding, productive members of society. Many abused children, even if they survive, grow up to need major future intervention and expenditure in the health, education and criminal justice areas. Let us make a wise investment in the resources to prevent child abuse.
	I hope that the Minister can reassure us that the new children's trusts will pilot multi-disciplinary practices and child death review teams and report back their success. I also hope that he will reassure us that the Government will do better than the watered down version of a children's commissioner for England proposed in the Laming report and that they will think again about law reform on physical punishment. I can assure the noble Lord that I shall never rest until they do.

Lord Chan: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, on securing this debate on children and young people, who are much in the news and for whom the noble Baroness is clearly a champion. She has given us a helpful review of children's services. Other noble Lords have identified a whole raft of government initiatives relevant to the care of children and the failure of co-ordination of services that led to the death of Victoria Climbie. My concern for children arises from my professional background as well as from being a non-executive director of an NHS primary care trust in the North West. I shall focus on children living in poverty and report on a new training scheme for doctors and other professionals to protect children.
	Our primary care trust map of where children live shows that the five poorest wards with severe deprivation have the highest proportion of children and young people. That pattern of distribution of our child population is also found in other regions of Britain where economic poverty, social deprivation and low educational achievement predominate. Nationally about one in four of our children lives in low income families.
	Professor Aynsley-Green, the national clinical director for children in the Department of Health has asked repeatedly:
	"Is it not outrageous that we in the fourth richest country in the world still have so many children living in poverty?"
	In order to co-ordinate the work of local authority agencies, the NHS and the voluntary sector, local strategic partnerships have been set up with the encouragement of regional government offices. These LSPs are very good for networking but less effective when action is required on the ground. Neighbourhood forums are the mechanism for co-ordination of local authority agencies, the NHS, the police and voluntary community groups. Progress may be slow because there are insufficient resources and extra capacity to focus co-ordinated action where it is needed for children and their families.
	The Government are to be congratulated on their commitment to helping children out of poverty by means of family benefits, the Sure Start programme and offering free nursery places to three year-old children, particularly in deprived districts.
	Sure Start has been a success in most settings of deprivation because it has introduced new resources and taken an integrated approach with local government and other agencies to work with parents and children to promote the physical, intellectual and social development of babies and young children. I have seen this work very well in the Wirral, where I live.
	However, in order to serve children and parents at risk, co-ordination is essential among many agencies in mainstream services. Bureaucracy has to be reduced to a minimum, but someone has to take a lead. Is it not time to ensure that in all districts of deprivation Sure Start should take a lead, working with local people and families across education, local authority, social services and the NHS, together with voluntary groups? I hope the Minister will comment on that proposal.
	I have detected an anomaly with service provision. It concerns the definition of children by age range. Sure Start limits its services to 14 year-olds with an extension to 16 years for the disabled child. In hospital, children's services continue to be available until the age of 18. Could those differences in the upper age limits for services lead to some children failing to be served?
	I turn now to the Department of Health's proposals to improve nutrition for mothers and children, which were published on 14th November 2002. The Government are to be congratulated on reforming the Welfare Food Scheme to give pregnant women, mothers and young children in low income groups greater access to a healthy diet.
	While working with all interested groups, including the food and dairy industry, it is important that the best nutrition is not compromised by disincentives for mothers to breastfeed their newborn babies and for children to indulge in snacks with high salt and sugar contents advertised on television and stocked in coin-operated machines.
	The Government should spend some of their budget on advertisements promoting, and providing, more fruit, vegetables and cereal-based foods. What a young child eats will influence his or her future health as an adult who is unlikely to be obese. More must be done to dissuade children and young people from smoking cigarettes by giving them other forms of enjoyment, such as play and sport. Social workers should also be encouraged to give families advice on good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.
	I want to focus on how health, social services and other agencies can be encouraged to work together for the benefit and protection of children. Teamworking of professional people from different disciplines is best developed if they are encouraged to meet regularly as a priority with support from their managers. Training together to appreciate their different roles in protecting children is essential.
	As a Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, I commend the college's new training programme to help new doctors, including GPs, to have a basic understanding of teamwork with social workers, police and the judicial system. Doctors will be introduced to non-medical professionals and their responsibilities. Diagnosis of child abuse will be given as high a priority as serious life-threatening illness. That training programme has been designed in partnership with the NSPCC and is currently funded by a drug company. It will be assessed after a year.
	The Royal College has also proposed establishing a register for child protection specialists from health, social care and other backgrounds. This register will be set up by the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners based in the Home Office and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
	I also look forward to the Minister's comments and support for these two developments that are in line with the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, after the Victoria Climbie inquiry.
	The Government have introduced numerous initiatives for the benefit of children and their families, particularly for those living in deprivation. But many of those programmes are seen more as targets to be achieved rather than as a co-ordinated approach to improve the health and life chances of children.
	National service frameworks have introduced standards of care for people with major life-threatening diseases and for older people. Soon we shall have a series of documents on standards of care for children in hospital, maternity services and the care of very ill newborn babies and children at risk. But NSFs are seen as standards for the health service. Is there room in the children's NSF for a co-ordinated approach to be taken by health professionals and the social services? That would give a strong signal that a document published by the Department of Health should be acted upon by the Department of Social Services and social workers.
	In conclusion, I support the recommendations of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for a children's commissioner and for all government policies to be examined by impact assessment affecting children before they are introduced.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for the opportunity to discuss the urgent need to co-ordinate services for children.
	In recent years there have been, alas, far too many incidents of child murder and gross ill-treatment of children not to be appalled both by the details of these crimes and by our apparent inability, within a supposedly civilised society, to prevent such things happening.
	The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children was reminded a few days ago by Professor Aynsley-Green that despite society's professed paramount concern for children's welfare, the services concerned have probably never been given the priority and resources required to achieve this aim. Cruelty, child abuse—physical and sexual—child labour, slavery and other forms of exploitation have almost certainly been with us throughout history; and though tackled to some extent in the Victorian era by the sterling and dedicated work of voluntary organisations, even today we are far from achieving the safe, loving home for all children that we hope to provide ourselves.
	The Government are dedicated to getting all children out of poverty—we have heard this repeated also by my noble friend Lord Chan—but, as we know, one in three still are in poverty and the aim must be achieved within a generation. It is a brave aim and it will certainly help to prevent some, although not all, of the abuses that continue to be perpetrated against children, and which are inevitably spelt out in those children's subsequent behaviour.
	The real problem is how to translate that oft-repeated good intention into actual practice on the ground. Perhaps the most appalling aspect of our latest report, by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, is the extent of the failure by practically all of the services that could and should have taken the necessary preventive action. Inevitably, those who received much of the blame were the hard-pressed front-line workers, but it was the lack of leadership and total unwillingness of those at the top to accept any responsibility for what took place that was the most shocking aspect of the case.
	So what do we need to do? Many suggestions have already been made both in the report and our debate. A number of valuable government initiatives are under way. I, too, support the need for an independent children's commissioner for England. More resources must be found for the report's recommendations—not least for recruitment, training and retraining of staff involved in those services. Far greater priority must be given to providing services for families and children—especially, as others have said, locally. Greater co-ordination and information-sharing among all those services—including education and police—must be planned in detail. It is also important to ensure that those services are available wherever the need exists.
	As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said, families and vulnerable children must also be consulted about their priorities for what services are needed. One of the most disturbing aspects of recent debates—whether on special needs or disabled children—has been the realisation that the actual level of services that in theory are provided depends on the area in which one happens to live. Today, we know far more about the importance of positive parenting—a rather chilling phrase, I find, but your Lordships know exactly what it means.
	Most crucial is the warm, loving relationship between parents or carers and children. As we all know, even positive parents sometimes fail, but there is by now irrefutable evidence that "unhelpful parenting"—a perhaps rather euphemistic phrase—especially in the early months and years of a child's life almost inevitably results in anti-social behaviour, poor educational attainment and self-esteem, and can be the reason for subsequent physical and mental problems. No doubt my noble friend Lord Northbourne will expand on that.
	It is therefore vital that we make the support of vulnerable families and children a number one priority for us all—and I mean all of us. We must acknowledge our individual as well as collective responsibility for what has happened. Your Lordships' collective responsibility for overseeing how public money is spent is certainly important, but so too is the role that each of us plays as a citizen in our local community. Volunteering is back in fashion—and so it should be. Longevity means a growing and talented pool of those over retirement age. Organisations such as REACH and the Experience Corps, which was set up about two years ago and has already recruited about 80,000 extra volunteers, are tremendous examples of what can be achieved.
	We must also hope that citizenship courses will alert the younger generation to the value of supporting their neighbours who are less advantaged. Who knows, the situation may be reversed at any stage of their lives. Parenthood—its duties as well as its joys—is part of that curriculum of citizenship, although I expect that my noble friend Lord Northbourne agrees that it needs far greater emphasis.
	When I chaired a local government management board review into standards of care in residential homes in 1991–92, one of our recommendations was that each councillor should have a specific and continuing responsibility to visit at any time of the day and night and to report on one or two homes on a regular basis. That is the sort of additional voluntary commitment that some services will need. One reason for individuals to become more active citizens in such a way is that we must acknowledge that all the resources necessary to meet the considerable challenge are unlikely to be supplied from the public purse. There are always far too many legitimate demands on limited resources. I well remember Keith Joseph, when a health Minister, saying that it would be possible to spend the entire gross domestic product on the National Health Service. I suspect that the same is true today.
	A charming quote used by Professor Aynsley-Green is that,
	"children are the living message that we send to a time we will not see".
	I fear that that may no longer be true. The longer we live, the more likely we are to see the fruits of our failures. Starting from now and using all the resources available, we must reduce substantially the number of families and children we still fail. In failing them, we fail ourselves.

The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, for introducing this timely debate. On a Friday afternoon about three years ago, I visited a mental health nurse at a hostel for young addicts in King's Cross. She and three fellow mental health nurses were appointed to work in that project 12 months before, but her three fellow nurses had resigned. I spoke to her. She was utterly exhausted. After listening to her, I was distressed for the weekend. She asked: "Why were we put into this situation with so little support?"
	The question that I shall address is whether we are providing adequate support from the Department of Health to those working in the front line with children in our social services. In particular, is such support adequate and consistent within children's homes? Appropriately trained psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists must act as consultants to residential care staff in children's homes. I emphasise that that should be on a sustained and regular basis; that the adults to be supported should normally meet the consultant as a group; and that that support should normally take place in the children's home.
	The report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Selection, Development and Management of Staff in Children's Homes, Choosing with Care, published in 1992 and chaired by my noble friend Lord Warner, made important observations on that subject and on partnership with carers. Paragraph 8.26 states:
	"Often the most cost effective and appropriate role for professional specialists is that of supporting staff in children's homes who are working directly with children".
	Expert witnesses to the inquiry said that the best professionals,
	"recognise that some continuing relationship with the home is the proper context in which to offer their expertise".
	The report states:
	"We consider that there is scope for using the professional NHS or educational specialists to train, advise and support staff in homes. This should have immense benefits in terms of cost, in that staff will be able to deliver services which would otherwise require a great deal of input from outside the home; external professionals will be able to monitor the performance of staff in delivering treatment to children and the effectiveness of therapeutic regimes; and the status of staff will be enhanced as they take on a more professional role with respect to children".
	We are moving towards the system that my noble friend Lord Warner and his colleagues envisaged. I welcome the development of new minimum standards for children's homes. One hopes that Dr Roger Morgan, director of children's rights at the National Care Standards Commission, will be able to use those standards to promote best practice. I also welcome the additional funding that Her Majesty's Government have provided for the child and adolescent mental health services to work specifically with children in care through Quality Protects.
	Last week, I heard from the director of a major provider of services in the North West that there was no such support in their homes. In another recent conversation, I spoke to a children's home manager whose staff had a consultation with a child psychotherapist every three weeks. She wished earnestly for a better and more frequent service to the children and was confident that, if the consultations were more frequent, she could deliver a better service and better outcomes for her children.
	I accept that there is a shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists, and I know that the Minister is working to address that shortage. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, and several other Peers drew attention to that. One child and adolescent psychiatrist described consultants as being under siege and said that their offices would field calls and take referrals only from GPs. They added patients to waiting lists that stretched over several months. In some areas, child and adolescent mental health services do not consider looked-after children to have priority needs. Children in care may wait for several weeks or months before receiving specialist attention.
	Professor Panos Vostanis, of Leicester University, recently described to me how he and his colleagues reached out into the community with their child and adolescent mental health services. They provide support to staff working with young offenders, families in temporary accommodation and other vulnerable groups. Professor Vostanis is increasing the capacity of staff to meet the needs of their clients without recourse to CAMHS, as the Choosing with Care report suggested. He also trains staff to identify and refer children and young people who can benefit most from CAMHS. Such early referrals are more economic than later interventions, by which time a crisis may have been reached. Professor Aynsley-Green, who is responsible for the children's NHS framework, urges professionals to come out of their bunker. That is what Professor Vostanis appears to be doing.
	The Minister may recall our meeting with Philip Stokoe, several years ago. Mr Stokoe is a psychotherapist who not only trains social workers and residential social workers at the Tavistock Clinic to deal with the emotional content of their work but trains such frontline staff to train others. Perhaps we need to consider further more creative ways of meeting the demand for expertise in mental health.
	The Minister will recognise the importance of stability in the chaotic lives of looked-after children. Consistent and adequate support from mental health professionals may increase that stability. I once visited a home provided by Centrepoint in Olympia for children and young people with what were described as medium support needs. The home met a higher level of need than that. One young woman had substantial scars on her wrist. Outreach workers particularly respected the establishment and referred their most difficult clients there.
	The staff at Buffy House were supported each week by a psychotherapist. Over several years, he had provided group support to staff at the home. Although the staff dealt with some of Centrepoint's most difficult clients, the home had the lowest level of sickness leave in the Centrepoint organisation. Support of the kind that I describe appears to reduce stress on staff while encouraging them to reflect on their work. Those two factors should improve levels of staff retention, and children in care should benefit from a less transient staff population. We all know that there is a serious problem in children's homes with many agency staff flitting in and out of children's lives. I look forward to the National Children's Bureau report on staff retention, to be published shortly. It may provide more relevant evidence.
	Before concluding, I shall raise with the Minister a concern that has just been raised with me. Mr John Denham, the Minister for Children and Young People, is this week considering an application for funding from the children's fund for the parents' information service of the children's mental health charity, Young Minds. It is a telephone service that provides high-quality advice to parents concerned about their children's emotional state. We all wish to prevent family breakdown, and it is better to avoid social and health services intervention where possible. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to convey my concern that the service should continue. I recently spoke at length to Juliet Buckley, a health visitor and one of the two people manning the service. I am confident that it is a valuable service.
	I welcome the commitment that the Government show to children and young people in care, and I look forward to the report that the Department of Health is putting together on the mental health of children in care. The current support from CAMHS is, I am afraid, inadequate and inconsistent. Social services departments are not buying in sufficient psychological support for their staff. More must be done. When the mental health nurse Gabriella Camires visited me, some time after our first meeting, I asked her, as she departed from the Peers' Entrance, why it was so important to have input of the sort that I describe. She said that, without such support, staff were operating blind. I look forward to the Minister's reply.

Baroness Blood: My Lords, I must first declare an interest as a non-executive director of the North and West Belfast Health and Social Services Trust.
	Co-ordination between health and social services is a key and fundamentally important issue, if we are to improve the life chances of children and young people in this country. The debate is timely and topical, given recent tragic events. I welcome the chance to give a Northern Ireland perspective on a debate that has implications for all children and families in the United Kingdom.
	Few issues concerning the most vulnerable children do not involve the interface between the two elements of service provision. Often, health and social services are different sides of the same coin. Working together, they can play a huge role in meeting the needs of children and improving their life chances.
	Of course, there is no shortage of challenges at that interface. For instance, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, children looked after by the state frequently suffer from poor health and have low levels of educational attainment. That is not down to staff in the homes; it is down to the pressures on those staff, the lack of such staff and the fact that staff may change often.
	Statistics show that children aged under 12 months are more at risk of abuse, but the number of post-natal home visits by midwives and health visitors fell by 20 per cent—from 6 million in 1990–91 to 4.6 million in 1998–99.
	Thirty per cent of children and adolescents in Northern Ireland are affected by some form of mental health problem. Suicide rates are high in that group, mainly among young men. There are limited psychiatric facilities for children and adolescents, especially in north and west Belfast, where the Troubles have taken a heavy toll of mental health. A book on mental health in north and west Belfast, entitled Caring Through the Troubles, has just been published.
	The Climbie inquiry has, yet again, graphically and tragically illustrated the outcome of poor co-ordination between health and social services. In Northern Ireland, we have also had child tragedies, such as the Magowan case, which prompted my colleague, Monica McWilliams MLA, to instigate an Assembly Health Committee inquiry into child protection. Unfortunately, it was unable to be completed before the suspension of the Assembly. However, it took extensive evidence from staff in both health and social services.
	Northern Ireland has been fortunate to operate an integrated model of health and social services provision. There has been common management at trust and board level between health and social services professionals. Frequently, staff will be based at common localities and regular contact takes place between health visitors and social workers. In dealing with the complex needs of children and their families, this approach is essential.
	In North and West Belfast, the trust has been moving towards a healthy living centre—we hope to build three—which will be in partnership with the Belfast City Council, the Belfast Education and Library Board and the North and West Health Board. It will be a unique partnership to set up a "one-stop shop" where the local community will have access to all the professional workers—for example, GPs, health visitors and social workers—and an information bureau. We also have a number of health action zones. I consider that to be good practice both in terms of value for money and ensuring that the needs of the community can be met in an integrated manner.
	However, even with the integration of health and social services there are blocks and difficulties to improving co-ordination. It is important to learn from our experiences. Evidence given to the Assembly Children Protection Inquiry indicated that while an integrated health and social services structure assisted, to a degree, professional people communicating and working together, there still remained room for improvement. Lack of inter-agency communication is an issue raised time and time again, while domination of the health budget by the acute hospital sector, funding being diverted from family and child care programmes and the low status and general invisibility of childcare issues have not helped to improve the situation.
	I am delighted to report very significant developments taking place in Northern Ireland. As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said, the children's commissioner for Northern Ireland—legislation will be passing through your Lordships' House after this debate—will play a key role in promoting the wider welfare of children across all disciplines. We look forward to that.
	A DHSSPS strategy for children's social services and publication of new inter-agency child protection guidance co-operating to safeguard children both involve significant interface between health and social services. There will also be the creation of a child protection advisory group at the highest level within the department, comprising senior officials—that is most important—from health, social services and other professions. It will assist the department in disseminating key messages from case management reviews which will involve lessons from both health and social services.
	My noble friend Lady Howe made me think when she spoke earlier. It makes me rather annoyed when people speak of children being our future. Children are here and now. It is as if, in speaking about children being the future, we are saying that we shall put a little bit in now and another little bit next week—rather like saving for one's pension, but maybe I should not speak of pensions. Children are here and now and the problems are here and now. That is what we should be dealing with.
	For example, in Northern Ireland there is a Sure Start programme, but it had to be fought for. We had a real fight to get Sure Start in Northern Ireland, and there still are issues for which we need to fight.
	In conclusion, I welcome this debate. We have a wealth of expertise across the United Kingdom on working relationships between health and social services and how this can lead to improved outcomes for children. We should be using it.

Baroness Gale: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Massey for introducing this important debate. Since the appointment of a children's commissioner for Wales, there has been much discussion about the need for similar posts in the rest of the United Kingdom. It is good to know that later today an order is to be moved for a children's commissioner for Northern Ireland. The Scottish Parliament is at present debating a similar Bill. It appears that only English children and young people will be without a champion to listen to them and to be a voice for them.
	There are many organisations in England which believe that there should be a children's commissioner for England. This week I received a booklet from the Children's Rights Alliance for England called The Case for a Children's Commissioner for England. There are over 180 organisations affiliated to the idea. It summarises what is happening in other parts of the UK and the rest of the world on these issues and puts the case for a children's commissioner for England.
	The alliance outlines what government provisions are already in place for the protection of children—a children's rights director and the national clinical director for children—which significantly add to the existing safeguards for vulnerable children. All those campaigning for a children's commissioner have welcomed the two new posts but say that there are many ways in which they do not—individually or between them—cover the range of functions required of a children's human rights institution. That, of course, was never to be their function.
	In Wales, we are fortunate to have a children's commissioner. The post has greatly improved the life chances of children in Wales. Looking at the way in which the children's commissioner for Wales has been operating, the first annual report makes interesting reading. In the short time that there has been such an appointment, it has proved its worth. Wales is ahead of the rest of the United Kingdom on this matter.
	The Labour Party manifesto for the Welsh Assembly elections in 1999 contained the commitment for an independent children's commissioner, as recommended by the Waterhouse report Lost in Care on the North Wales child abuse scandal. Following the first Welsh Assembly elections in May 1999, the Assembly proceeded to ensure that this appointment was made. The Children's Commissioner for Wales Act was implemented by the Westminster Parliament.
	The post has now been in position since May 2001. In his first report, Mr Peter Clarke, the children's commissioner, said:
	"Much of what I have heard has saddened me especially the fact that so few young people feel they are respected by us adults. My work has also brought into close focus the ways in which children can be seriously harmed by adults either deliberately or by carelessness.
	But much has brought joy, especially the creativity and skills that young people show and their willingness and capacity to discuss the issues that affect them".
	The commissioner has the power to review the effect of policies and delivery of services to children, extending the commissioner's remit well beyond services directly provided for children—for example, social care, health and education. The powers also cover policies and practice of the Welsh Assembly itself. The commissioner can consider and make representations to the Assembly about any matter affecting the rights and welfare of children in Wales. This means that he can deal with issues such as a Home Office-run juvenile offenders' institution, the family court and benefit matters, not within the remit of the Assembly.
	His powers are designed to be sufficient to act as an informed champion of children and their rights. They include authority to give advice and guidance to children and a requirement to ascertain the views of children and young people. Those are only some of the powers, but they give a flavour of the work that the commissioner is undertaking in Wales on behalf of children.
	When the post was first established the idea was given a strong emphasis on a power to influence and to help bring about a change in the culture in which children in Wales grow up. The commissioner must have regard to the United Nations convention on the rights of the child in everything he does. Children's rights must underpin all his own and his team's activities. The main way in which most of those rights are realised is through active participation. That empowers young people and enlightens adults whose work and attitudes affect them.
	There is general praise and recognition for the work of the children's commissioner in Wales and beyond. There are children's commissioners in many countries; for instance, Australia, Costa Rica, France, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary and Nicaragua to name but a few. In England, there are two regional commissioners in Oxford and London. These have been established by NGOs and local government. In the UK, we see one already established in Wales and the likelihood of there being one in Scotland and another in Northern Ireland in the foreseeable future. That poses the question: where does that leave the children of England?
	The NSPCC, in its initial response to the Laming report, welcomed the recommendations for a ministerial children's and families' board, the new national agency for children and families and the new local national agency for children and families. Together with many organisations, the NSPCC, while welcoming the recommendations, says that it supports the idea of a children's commissioner in England to act as an independent champion and watchdog for children. The noble Lord, Lord Laming, in his report, proposed that a civil servant should take that role, together with his responsibilities as chief executive of a key government agency. The post will be less powerful than a children's commissioner in Wales and significantly weaker than the proposed children's commissioner in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Children in England need a separate children's commissioner who can be their powerful and independent advocate.
	In conclusion, the theme running through the post of children's commissioner in Wales is that it is independent. For any children's commissioner to succeed, the post must be independent. It would not work if the person were a civil servant. The commissioner is free to act on behalf of children throughout Wales in a way which would be difficult for a civil servant. We must act in the best interests of the children.
	The sad thing about the recommendations of the North Wales inquiry and the Victoria Climbie inquiry is that, despite many agencies working on behalf of children, they failed the children they were meant to protect. Unfortunately, it seems that things happen only when children have already suffered. That is one of the reasons why I strongly believe that the excellent example we have in Wales should be repeated throughout the United Kingdom. I and other noble Lords have mentioned the likelihood of children's commissioners for Northern Ireland and Scotland.
	It seems to me that where there is devolved government, there is more of a determination for a post of this nature. I am not sure what that says about England: perhaps it will want to go down the road of devolution. Can the Minister say whether there are plans for an independent children's commissioner for England along the lines of the one in Wales? Wales has proved that it can work and for any noble Lords who have an interest in these matters—and those in the Chamber today have already expressed an interest—I would recommend that they read the annual report of the children's commissioner for Wales. I am sure they will agree with me that it makes excellent reading and is a good way forward in the way we should be safeguarding and protecting our children.

Lord Northbourne: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for introducing this important debate. I am afraid that I shall disappoint my noble friend Lady Howe, but I shall give your Lordships a break and shall not talk about parenting. I believe that this is an organisational issue.
	In 1918, Lord Haldane was given the job of writing a report about the future of the British Civil Service. I shall quote from Section 18, which states:
	"Upon what principle are the functions of Departments to be determined and allocated? There appear to be only two alternatives, which may be briefly described as distribution according to the persons or classes to be dealt with, and distribution according to the services to be performed".
	He then proceeded to demolish the former alternative with the famous words,
	"Now the inevitable outcome of this method of organisation is a tendency to Lilliputian administration".
	A little later he went on to say,
	"The other method"—
	that is, distribution in accordance with the job to be done—
	"and the one we recommend for adoption, is that of defining the field of activity in the case of each Department according to the particular service which it renders to the community as a whole".
	I am sure that Lord Haldane made the right judgment at the time—and it may still be the right judgment—but that decision lies at the root of the problem we are discussing today. No one department of state is responsible for guaranteeing and paying for the services which children and their families may need.
	I looked at the Children Act 1989 to see whether the situation had been changed. Section 17 places a duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in their area. In that Act, there is a new emphasis on working with families to provide for the needs of children. Furthermore, local authorities are directed to work with and facilitate the work of others. The emphasis of the Act is not only, or mainly, on children at risk, but more emphasis is given to the problems of children in need. I believe that supporting children in need is the best way to prevent children from becoming children at risk and to challenge disadvantage—but that is an aside.
	Sections 17 and 27 of the Act would seem to impose on local authorities an obligation to work with other services to provide for children in need and to mobilise and facilitate working with other agencies. Does that not imply that local authorities must take the lead, organise the work, take responsibility and provide the funding to achieve success in that work together? Without leadership, this change is never going to happen—a point made by my noble friends Lord Chan and Lady Howe.
	Many local authorities' social services departments today have inadequate human and financial resources, even to protect children at risk. I know of a case of a social worker in one of the deprived boroughs of London who had a caseload of 82. I know of cases where children at risk have not for a time had an allocated social worker.
	So what are we going to do? The Government are working hard at this issue and with some success. However, because there is no clear definition of responsibility and no clear funding responsibility, children are falling through the net. What percentage of local authorities are funding and delivering preventive and family support services to the standards envisaged in the Children Act 1989? If some are not, why not and what are we going to do about it?
	Anecdotally, perhaps I might tell your Lordships that yesterday I spoke to some of my colleagues in the children's department at Toynbee Hall. I asked the lead person, "What do you think about this issue?". He said, "I'll tell you what happens in practice". There is in place there a befrienders operation and he told me that in practice when a case is raised members of the departments concerned are called together at a meeting. They all sit around the table, have a cup of coffee and talk about the case. Then, as the meeting draws to an end, everyone starts sitting on their hands and remembering that they have something else to do. No one wants to take the lead because that would involve a lot of work and the funding would have to come from their budget. It is a structural problem.
	My vision is of one department of state being responsible for organising care services and for buying in the services they need from other departments of state. I know that today's debate is concerned only with social services and the National Health Service but, because education starts at birth, in my view there is a strong argument for the Department for Education and Skills to take responsibility for this issue right from day one. It could buy in the health and social services it needs. I see the noble Lord shaking his head but this is only an idea. There must be a better way of doing this so that people know where they stand. There must be someone in charge who knows where the money is coming from. In that way, the outcome could then be evaluated and we would all know where we are going.

Baroness Barker: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for giving the House a welcome opportunity to focus on the issue of children's health and social care. Her masterly introduction set the scene for an enormously valuable debate, which has focused, as it should, on the central issue of co-ordination. It also has given us an opportunity to consider what should be included in the forthcoming Green Paper on children at risk.
	As many noble Lords have said, the Climbie report is not only a searing response to the tragedy of what happened to one little girl but a starting point for the development of quality practice and, crucially, a debate about structures. Although I respect what the noble Lord, Lord Laming, has said, I have misgivings about the national structures he advocates.
	It is a very sad reflection that social care is an issue which rarely achieves prominence in the media outwith the tragic times when a child dies as a result of abuse. We should not forget that every day social workers, teachers and NHS staff protect children and that, as a result, this country's record of child murders and abuse has been improving.
	A lot of people came to the Laming report with preconceptions, looking for confirmation of their own pet ideas. Not me. I read it from scratch, completely afresh, and three issues jumped out at me. The first was the failure of anyone involved to talk to Victoria herself. Throughout the 11 months in which Victoria was in this country, across the many agencies involved in her case there was complete confusion about who was the client. Tragically, despite the evidence from an early stage that it was a child protection case, there was an ongoing failure to see Victoria rather than her mad aunt as the client. Organisations and systems mattered more than simply doing what was obviously right—that is, talking and listening to children.
	The second issue was the failure of each agency which came into contact with Victoria to record, use and share information with other agencies and to follow routine good practice. There was evidence of organisations chasing targets instead of thinking and doing the right thing. We need to address that issue, too.
	The third issue was that no one in any agency saw themselves as being either responsible or accountable for what happened to Victoria. The noble Lord, Lord Laming, devotes much of his report to the failure of agencies, corporately or operationally, to see themselves responsible for the end output for children.
	Those initial thoughts lead me to the opinion that child protection and good care of children happens locally in families, communities and local authorities. That is where the search for answers must begin and end. Whatever the Government do should reflect that.
	In another context, the Minister is only too well aware of my views on going abroad and searching for models of social care, bringing them back and adopting them in this country. I do not advocate that we should adopt them wholesale, but there are one or two models we should look at in terms of their applicability here.
	The first proposal is advocated by the Family Rights Group and concerns family-led decision making. The proposal for family group conferences began in New Zealand, where it has been very successful in identifying children at risk and developing support and has succeeded in reducing the number of children and young people in care. It has also reduced the use of custody for young offenders.
	The rationale for family group conferences is that where a child is at risk, or offends, decision-making tends to be carried out by professionals, often without the participation of extended family members. Yet most children who are at risk either remain in or, after a short gap, return to those families and communities. It is those families and communities who are best able to safeguard children and to help them become active and responsible adults.
	We have used family group conferences in this country, to a limited extent so far, and I suggest that the Government should look at this successful model—particularly its success in avoiding custodial sentences—being extended across all local authorities.
	A separate piece of research conducted in Kirklees involved case conferences for families of people who had been involved in child protection. It found a number of good and bad things. Parents reported that big case conferences involving lots of professionals were intimidating and confusing; medical staff often did not explain or keep parents informed and were felt to be patronising. Conversely, parents found that having police explain injuries to them was important because it enabled them to understand what might have happened. The support offered to families under protection plans was helpful, especially when it continued after deregistration. Feedback to parents was not believed until it was put in writing.
	That is one example of some good work carried out under Quality Protects. The extension of Quality Protects until April 2004 is most welcome but, in view of the need at the moment to maintain consistency of personnel in services, a point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, will the Government consider extending Quality Protects for a few more years?
	Child protection is, and will remain, a key function of health and social care agencies. The Government's proposal on children's trusts deserves to be looked at but, before going down the route of restructuring, it should be borne in mind, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, said, that child protection services are always reactive. They come into play only when something adverse has happened to a child.
	The focus of children's services should be preventive and designed to create positive outcomes for children. If the starting point is the design and delivery of services which promote the well-being and health of children—that is, preventive—where should they be sited? I listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said about being where children are. I believe, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, most children are in school, but they are also in communities where they also come into contact with health services. We need to look more imaginatively at where care services are based.
	In September 2002, the ADSS published Tomorrow's Children, a brief, extremely good report about the current state of children's services and future models. I commend it to noble Lords. In that report the ADSS readily admits that there has to be closer working, and that structural barriers have to be removed. It cites a model of service development from the state of Vermont in the USA. There, rather than restructuring organisations, a multi-agency approach, including families and community organisations as well as health, education and social services, has been developed.
	The key to what has been a successful strategy is that the aims are joint and clear and are set in conjunction with children and families themselves. For example, its aims are that children should live in stable families; that children are ready for and thrive in school; that young people choose healthy lifestyles. Resources are, by agreement, devoted to those outcomes. It looks for improvements in immunisation rates, reductions in teenage pregnancies and a decline in child abuse victims. The strategy has worked because every agency has taken responsibility in all that it does and has followed through on that. Crucially, behind the strategy is one simple principle—children's services are a state not a federal matter. So it is local decision making and local outcomes that are important.
	It may be tempting for Ministers to go down the route of placing responsibility for children's services with one lead agency, and for that to be health. Like the noble Lords, Lord Rea and Lord Chan, I would advocate against doing that. To do so would be to take a narrow medical view of children's lives.
	More children in this country die in road traffic accidents than die from abuse. Playing fields are being closed down, physical education is in decline. Open spaces are of enormous importance to children's health, as are housing conditions. All are important determinants of health. Local authorities are well placed to take a holistic view of the provision of services. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Chan: LSPs are very good in terms of what they do, but they are no substitute for statutory, voluntary and private organisations with their own clearly defined roles and remits.
	In all of the many policy papers that have been produced within the past two years in anticipation of the Laming report, two factors stand out. The first is the need to involve children and families in decision-making—not merely in consultation, but in decision-making. They are the people who view the problems and can see the solutions, and are best placed to deal with them in the longer term. Without their active involvement, all the intervention in the world will not make a difference.
	The second is the need for clear lines of accountability. Much has been said about a national children's commissioner. There will be a need for such an advocate for children. But in all organisations, at all levels, front-line staff, managers and users need to be involved, along with strategic planners, and to focus on practical outcomes for children; and they must have the confidence to act when those outcomes are not met.
	In the short time available to me, I cannot let this opportunity pass without making one simple statement: unregulated private fostering is wrong. It is dangerous for children; it should stop; and we should start to eradicate it now. Noble Lords have heard me speak on this subject previously and I shall not talk about it at considerable length now.
	I hope that the Government are bold and radical in their response to the Laming report. I hope that in their radical and cross-cutting thinking, they will be brave enough to recognise that the answers are not within government; they are at the front line, and it is the role of government to listen, not to set more targets.

Earl Howe: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for initiating this most timely debate. One of the benefits of a Motion such as this is that it encourages, as we have seen, some wide-ranging contributions. But we are all closely aware of the thread that has run through each of them; namely, the special duty that society has towards some of its most vulnerable members. The interaction between the NHS and social services impacts on three groups of children in particular: children at risk; children in care; and children in need of support.
	These categories are not, of course, mutually exclusive, but is it perhaps unsurprising that a number of speakers have chosen to concentrate on the first of them: children at risk. The urgency of protecting children from serious physical abuse is very much on all our minds. Only two weeks ago, we were able briefly to debate the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, into the tragic death of Victoria Climbie. Since then, we have had an opportunity to reflect on its recommendations. I hope that the Minister will at least be able to say a little about the way in which the Government are approaching what we all agree is a critical and pressing task.
	Many speakers—I think particularly of the noble Baroness, Lady Gale—have powerfully trumpeted the advantages of a children's commissioner. I have a great deal of sympathy with the noble Baroness's comments. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, whose experience in these matters is considerable, spoke eloquently about effective parenting and made an excellent case for fresh thinking in child support.
	Despite the passionate pleas of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, the Laming report pointed the finger, more than anything else, not at flaws in the legislative framework but at poor professional practice. It is against that background that the report's recommendations for improving accountability and creating new working structures should be viewed. In keeping with much of the interesting speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Blood, what emerges time and again in the report's findings is that the health service, social services and the police do not communicate properly—or frequently do not. While that is not a novel observation—indeed, it has featured in numerous similar reports over the years—it has brought home to all of us that these systemic flaws in communication do need to be addressed. The answer in the Laming report is to propose radically revised arrangements for collaborative working.
	One experiment which I shall follow with considerable interest is the children's trust. We first heard about this idea last October when it was announced by Mr Milburn. As I understand it, a children's trust will comprise a partnership of local organisations which will both commission and provide services for children in a joined-up fashion. The obvious question is whether we actually need a new kind of structure in order to ensure that the services are joined up, or whether it will be sufficient to invent new and better ways of getting the different agencies to talk to one another and to streamline procedures. Personally, I am drawn to the latter rather than the former.
	Ministers have been careful to say that children's trusts should not be seen as care trusts for children. That is important. It implies that the accountability of each constituent organisation in a children's trust need not be diluted in any way. A separate legal entity, with its own management hierarchy, would imply that member organisations would no longer be fully autonomous. The danger of that sort of arrangement is that no one is quite clear where the ultimate responsibility for anything actually lies.
	The trick that has to be pulled with a children's trust is to break down the boundaries between services without breaking down the autonomy of the agencies themselves. We constantly need to bear in mind what the ultimate point is: it is to deliver better outcomes for children, not to build empires. The prize, if it can be attained, will be very considerable: better case management, because there should be a better flow of information between service providers; quicker and more effective delivery of services, as a result of having a range of professional disciplines working alongside one another; harmonised procedures and less bureaucracy, so that with any luck we may be able to rely on one assessment process rather than several; and so on.
	Will the Minister confirm that the Government do not envisage any need for further primary legislation to create fully fledged children's trusts? There are already mechanisms in place, it seems to me, which can be used to further the aims that I have just outlined, not least the ability to pool budgets between the NHS and social services.
	We need to devote some thought to the advantages of co-location. That issue has a particular relevance if we are to achieve another potential benefit of a children's trust, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker; namely, to be able to identify and prevent problems and crises before they occur. I do not say that, with modern communications and better procedures, co-location is essential; but we all know from our own experience how valuable it is to have on the same corridor as yourself someone with specialist expertise to whom you can talk informally. If children's trusts are to work, I tend to feel that they will work because of the people in them and the professional relationships that they forge.
	Running parallel to the pilot children's trusts is the national service framework for children, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey and the noble Lord, Lord Chan. This is an immense, but, I am sure, worthwhile task. Indeed, we have only to think about some of the more dispiriting conclusions of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, to appreciate the scope for improvement in delivering children's services—which inevitably pre-supposes the need to define a set of nationally recognised standards. That, in turn, as the noble Lord, Lord Rea, reminded us, makes us think about the effort devoted to training.
	We have mentioned social work on several recent occasions in the Chamber. I do not propose to say much on the matter today. But we would do well to listen to the wise advice of bodies such as the NSPCC in this context. One paragraph of its recent report Someone to turn to caught my eye. It states that only social workers who have studied and had a practice placement in childcare should be able to undertake work with children and families. There should be an accreditation process for those who carry out assessments of children in need and Section 47 inquiries. It recommends that continuing registration as a social worker working with children and families should be linked to evidence of competence to undertake complex childcare work. I agree with that 100 per cent.
	One of the many sensible observations of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, is that any case of deliberate harm to a child is a serious and potentially fatal condition that deserves the same quality of diagnosis and treatment as a brain tumour or heart disease. Child protection work is not for the untrained amateur. I have spoken more than once about the real risks of falsely diagnosing cases of child abuse. The high-quality debate initiated last week by my noble friend Lord Hodgson about attention deficit disorder and ADHD brought us back into this territory. The theory of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy—unverified as it is by any peer-reviewed research—provides untrained and inexperienced social workers with a ready-made label to attach to any behaviour in a child that cannot easily be explained. It is much easier to blame parents than to investigate what are often very complex, interwoven conditions such as ADHD or Aspergers syndrome, which require specialist help and attention.
	Once the label of child abuse has been attached to a parent it is extremely difficult to remove. Yet we know that there are many hard-to-diagnose conditions that have been mistaken for parental maltreatment with devastating consequences for families. There is no substitute for taking the time to listen to parents' concerns and to children. In turn, that means that social workers should be encouraged to return to the essence of their job—to be supportive to children and families. The comments of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, on the Children Act 1989 were right. I have heard of too many cases in which social services have adopted an adversarial approach. That approach is then carried forward into care proceedings, which, parents feel, are more like a prosecution than an effort to secure a child's welfare. Such aggression and stigmatising does no good to anyone if the aim—as it should be—is to help families and to try to ensure that they can eventually be reunited.
	We have not debated to any great extent the training of doctors and health workers. The regular revalidation for GPs that the noble Lord, Lord Laming, talks about needs to be thought through in detail. One successful and proven idea, discussed in this week's BMJ, is practice-based workshops. Their aim is threefold: to inform GPs about their medical and legal obligations; to ensure that they are aware of the referral pathways that they should use; and to make them aware of the support available to them. Inter-professional collaboration can be brought to life only by discussing actual cases encountered by GP practices to which doctors can readily relate.
	Other issues to be looked at are children's trusts, better co-ordination between agencies and improved training. However, some problem areas will not be solved by those elements alone. In particular, we have simply not made the progress that we should have done to meet the needs of disabled children. Anyone who read the report by Barnardo's published last autumn Still Missing Out? will have been struck by the conclusion that none of the recent initiatives to help disabled children has succeeded in improving their lives significantly. Like the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, I think also of children's mental health services, where many organisations—NICE, Young Minds and others—have highlighted the paucity of appropriate provision for teenagers with mental health problems. Those are matters of real concern. They bring home not simply the importance of resourcing in the form of funds, which we all know is a pre-requisite for the NSF, but the importance of resourcing for key specialist areas, in which there are critical shortages in many parts of the country.
	As is clear from this debate, the Government are working across a wide front. I welcome the sense of urgency that they have articulated to date. Thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Laming, the forthcoming national service framework, the General Social Care Council, Sure Start and the forthcoming Green Paper on children, there is now a real momentum to improve children's services. Like other noble Lords, I welcome that, but it is our job to maintain that momentum.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to respond to what has been an excellent debate. It has covered many important aspects of the services available in this country to support and improve the life chances of children and young people. My noble friend Lady Massey made some striking comments at the beginning of her speech. She expressed her concerns about the inequalities in life for so many children, whether they are in absolute poverty or affected by such factors as poor health outcomes. I am always struck by figures that show that the average life expectancy of boys born in Manchester is probably up to nine years shorter than that of boys born in parts of Surrey. Similar gaps exist within Manchester.
	I agree with my noble friend Lord Rea that the Dr Julian Tudor Hart inverse care law has often been a feature of health service experience over the past 50 years. That makes it more important than ever that the targets set in Our Healthier Nation to reduce health inequalities are tackled vigorously. The noble Lord, Lord Chan, is right that that will succeed only if there is vigorous action at local level by NHS bodies working in concert with their colleagues in local government and the statutory and voluntary sectors.
	In response to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the outcomes of looked-after children, as we have discussed several times in the past few years, have been awful as regards their expectancy in work, their future stability and, sadly, the amount of contact that they will have with the police and the courts. Many end up in prison. The legislation that we have passed to improve the outcomes for looked-after children gives us hope that we are establishing a much better framework in which to improve their life chances. But, my goodness me, there is an awful lot to do.
	Several noble Lords spoke about the legislation on the safety and welfare of children. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, listed the legislation and actions concerned. I accept the assertion by my noble friend Lord Rea that it can sometimes be confusing for fieldworkers. I shall discuss the Laming report later. It was striking that he referred to the confusion of guidance on aspects of child protection. Perhaps it is no wonder that some fieldworkers were confused about their own responsibilities. One of the quick outcomes of the report is that we have pledged to produce, within three months of the publication of the Laming report, new, much shorter and clearer guidance that will reach every one of the 1 million professional staff dealing with the safeguarding of children.
	The debate takes place at a pivotal time. We are shortly to publish the first part of the national service framework on children's services. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Chan, that that will be aimed as much at local authorities as it is at the National Health Service. At the same time we are working on the Green Paper on children at risk.
	I have no doubt that the co-ordination of services will be a theme throughout those important publications. As the noble Lord, Lord Chan, said, a single agency or service alone cannot meet children's needs. Any number of initiatives have been based on the requirement to work together. Sure Start and education action zones are good examples of that. We also know that there has not been enough action to make that working together really effective.
	I shall come in a moment to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. Whatever structure we eventually come up with, there will still be a need for statutory agencies to work together.
	There are examples in which that is happening. Interestingly, there have been significant achievements between health and local authorities on the pooling of funds. The significant fact is that they are almost all in the sphere of adult services, with very few in children's services. That is one area that we could encourage health and local authorities to think through right away.
	I was interested in the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Blood, about the advantages of the integration of health and social services within one statutory organisation in Northern Ireland. I can see the advantages, but even she said that, despite that integration, there are funding issues. There are tensions between resources allocated to family budgets and those allocated to acute hospitals. That is a caution. It shows that there are clear advantages in an integration of statutory services, but it does not solve every problem overnight. There will always be tensions between different functions within the same statutory agencies.
	Children's trusts have great potential to solve some of the problems that have been identified. They will be piloted later this year. Importantly, they are to be led by local authorities. I accept the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, has made. The aim is to pool knowledge, skills and resources to provide more seamless local services for children. I shall not be drawn on the question asked by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about primary legislation. I note his cautions on the issue. I also take his point about co-location. However, children's trusts have the advantage of creating a unified service, but in concert with the existing statutory agencies. Of course I note what the noble Earl says about accountability and autonomy. We shall certainly have to address that. I have also taken on board the suggestions of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in that area.
	I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Chan, about the leadership in developing co-ordinating programmes. What he seeks is very much the focus of children's trusts through the involvement of children and of voluntary organisations. Children's trusts could provide a statutory framework, which can include Sure Start programmes and other services.
	My noble friend Lady Massey was worried about voluntary agencies being frozen out. There is no intention of that. We have made that clear in the recent guide to potential applicants for children's trusts.
	On Quality Protects, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Chan, referred to an extension for a few years. The five-year special grant is due to come to an end in March 2004, but that resource will continue to flow, although it will then be in the form of the formula grant to local authorities. We will work with the LGA, the ADSS and other organisations to embed the success of the Quality Protects initiative and to sustain the local initiatives. Everyone has seen the real benefit of this. I would be very surprised if local authorities did not want to continue the initiatives and the enthusiasm that have been put in train.
	My noble friend Lady Massey asked about the extent to which we listen to young people. We do listen to young people. I was interested in her suggestion of child impact analysis. As a department at the centre, and in the guidance that we are giving to local statutory agencies, we emphasise the need to listen to children. The department has created a national young people's reference group. I have agreed that the department will meet representatives of the UK Youth Parliament to talk through some of the issues that have been raised.
	I turn to the issue of a children's commissioner and a cross-government approach to co-ordinated and clear accountability. I understand why people want a children's commissioner to be appointed. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, would go further. He wants one government department to be responsible for all children's services. Of course I understand why he wants that. The problem is the same as in Northern Ireland. Even if we did that, we would not get rid of tensions between different aspects of those children's services. The other problem with taking children's services away from certain departments is that their statutory agencies would still have an impact on children. Some of the boundary issues that the noble Lord is concerned about would continue. I do not detract from why he wants clear accountability. However, my experience of Whitehall is that it is much more difficult to shuffle the pack around without creating some other boundary issues that have not been thought of until they are encountered in practice.
	That is why we have gone for the approach of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, of trying to get better co-ordination between existing departments. It is why John Denham has been appointed the Minister for young people. I shall pass the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about the Young Minds helpline to him. It is why we have the Children and Young People's Unit. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is right about the impact of that. It is why we appointed the first ever national children's rights director for England within the National Care Standards Commission. It is why we established a children's task force in my department, chaired by Professor Al Aynsley-Green. All noble Lords who have met him will have been impressed by his dedication and determination. He is not backward in telling Ministers what he thinks needs to happen in this area.
	I understand why noble Lords want us to appoint a children's commissioner. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lady Gale for the information she gave about what is happening in Wales. We are watching what is happening in the devolved administrations with great interest. Each children's commissioner in each of those countries has different responsibilities. I must not anticipate the Northern Ireland position until the appropriate order has been debated tonight.
	It also has to be proven that the idea would add value. There is a great risk of it becoming a symbol around which everyone unites, but be nothing more than a symbol or a token. Such a person would be ineffective in the structure of government within England. It is very important that we do not rush into this just because people think it is a good idea. We would have to be certain that it was going to be effective. We will consider what the noble Lord, Lord Laming, has said in this context. I note the issues that noble Lords raised. They do not like his recommendation that such a commissioner would be in his proposed national agency, which in turn would be responsible to a ministerial children and families board. We have a lot of thinking to do in that area.
	We debated the Victoria Climbie tragedy only two weeks ago, and it featured in many points raised by noble Lords tonight. As my noble friend Lord Rea and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, suggested, this is not just a question of the tragic circumstances of Victoria Climbie. Unfortunately, many of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Laming, found have been replicated in many inquiry reports in the past 20 or so years. However, as my noble friend Lord Rea identified, what made her case so appalling was that she was not hidden from the statutory authorities. She was known by three housing authorities, four social services departments, two separate child protection teams, two different NHS hospitals and a specialist centre managed by the NSPCC. There were 12 occasions when the relevant services had the opportunity to intervene and protect her, but they failed to do so. As the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, there was a signal failure to talk to Victoria herself.
	Frontline workers have to accept personal responsibility for their own failings, but so must managers and leaders. What is so telling about the report and recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, is that senior people must also accept responsibility. How often in the past has the unsupervised and poorly trained frontline worker made the ultimate sacrifice when senior people, who should have taken responsibility, have not taken it.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, identified that the basic failures included the failure to write records, to record discussions in case conferences, and to write minutes that set out which person was to take on which responsibility. That is very striking. It is because of those basic failures that we are asking the various inspectorates responsible to do further monitoring of services in north London to ensure that the basics are being undertaken. We have also made it clear, through the Home Secretary to the police and through my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health to chief executives of local authorities and the health service, that this must be a priority. We will check up that the basics are being implemented.
	The noble Earl, Lord Howe, brought us to the important issue of training. I assure him that we will take the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, fully on board. Social work training is being fundamentally overhauled and we are asking the bodies responsible—the police, social services and NHS staff, including doctors—to oversee a review of training needs with a focus on inter-agency training.
	I agreed with the point made by my noble friend Lord Rea, and was interested in what he said about the Southampton medical school. The noble Lord, Lord Chan, also raised the question of a training programme with the NSPCC and his own Royal College. That was also extremely interesting. However, we must accept that there are big recruitment and retention problems in the area of child protection, and in social services in particular. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, mentioned that, and she is right.
	I am glad to report an upturn in the number of applications from people applying to train as social workers. That is the first encouraging sign for a long time. We must build on that but, in doing so, we must build up the confidence of social workers. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the counsel to the Victoria Climbie inquiry, who made clear that every year hundreds of children benefit from efficient and timely intervention by social workers, police officers and hospital staff. We have to do everything we can to build up confidence in the profession of social workers especially. We need to attract and retain good people.
	Social workers have, again, taken the brunt of the criticism in the media, but anyone reading the report would testify that social workers are not the only ones to blame. Frankly, I was ashamed of the record of the National Health Service, because it let Victoria Climbie down, as did the Police Child Protection Unit. It is important that we do not simply scapegoat social workers in this area.
	The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, asked about Section 17 of the Children Act 1989. It places a duty on a number of named statutory authorities, including health services, to co-operate with councils with social services responsibilities in relation to their role. I listened to what he said about clear accountability. Who is responsible ultimately for making sure that the process works effectively? Who is responsible for funding?
	The noble Lord, Lord Laming, proposes a variety of suggestions. He proposes at local level a local members committee for children and families. Responsible to that would be a management board for services to children and families, which would be chaired by the chief executive of the local authority. Below that would be a director for children and families services, appointed by the management board to ensure inter-agency arrangements. Below that would be the existing statutory agencies.
	We will have to study that carefully, because we must ensure that it all hangs together. I understand why the noble Lord, Lord Laming, wants to place responsibility, especially on the local authority chief executive. However, we must ensure that in going down the route of clear accountability, we do not create a plethora of other structures and organisations that confuses rather than makes it clear who is responsible.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked me to discuss the issue of chastisement. I am not keen on chastisement of children. Parents need some discretion. There is a clear distinction between reasonable chastisement and child abuse, and I am doubtful of the wisdom of looking to legislation in that area.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, made a point about private fostering. As she knows, there is a legislative framework. It is not especially effective and we will consider what the noble Lord, Lord Laming, has to say in that area.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Blood, raised important issues in relation to mental health, echoed by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. Mental health services for children and adolescents are important, and I will take account of those comments.
	I am getting hints that I have come to the end of my time. It has been a splendid debate. All the comments have been helpful, and I shall ensure that they are fed into the department in relation to our response to the Climbie case, the Green Paper and the national service framework. What is clear is that all of us want a better deal for children in our society, and we are all determined that it will happen. There are complicated issues to sort out, but we are determined. I am indebted to my noble friend Lady Massey for enabling us to debate this subject tonight.

Baroness Massey of Darwen: My Lords, I have very much enjoyed this debate, and I hope that other noble Lords have too. It has been stimulating, well informed and provocative, and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part.
	It was good to hear the views from Northern Ireland and Wales. Other noble Lords have demonstrated the conviction that I expressed earlier: this House is knowledgeable about children's issues and concerned for children's welfare. We shall all be determined and unrelenting in our pursuit of issues raised today, in efforts to improve practice that affects children.
	I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, both of whom are deeply and genuinely concerned about the issues relating to children and families in social care. I thank my noble friend the Minister for his usual thorough and genuinely responsive comments. I saw that he was writing notes during every speech. Again, I thank noble Lords for their participation. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Bill

Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

Marriage (Northern Ireland) Order 2003

Lord Williams of Mostyn: rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 4th December 2002 be approved.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the purpose of the order is to reform, simplify and consolidate the existing procedures for marriage. It implements recommendations made to the Government by the Law Reform Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland, to which I pay full credit. It is virtually identical to the Marriage Bill considered in some detail by the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Bill received widespread support from a variety of interested parties. It was welcomed on a cross-party basis during its passage in the Assembly, where it had undergone debate on the Floor and detailed scrutiny from the relevant Assembly committee.
	The order has essentially three main aspects. First, there is the introduction of a new system of universal civil preliminaries based upon the use of the marriage schedule. This will put the law in Northern Ireland on a generally similar footing to that operating in Scotland. It replaces the existing complicated system.
	Secondly, there will be a new statutory scheme of authorised officiants who will be able to celebrate religious marriage. Religious bodies have welcomed this move which shifts the emphasis from the registration of buildings for religious marriages. That was commended by the Law Reform Advisory Committee as a more suitable and flexible model.
	Thirdly, there is a relaxation of the current rules relating to civil marriage venues. It will no longer be necessary for a civil wedding to take place in the local registration office. This, too, has been welcomed in Northern Ireland and gives couples wishing to marry a greater freedom of choice. I beg to move.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 4th December 2002 be approved.—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)

Lord Glentoran: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for bringing this order before us. To save repetition, I thank him for all the orders that he is about to bring and all that he is about to do. I assure the House—I say it now so that it goes into Hansard once—that I have not read the orders in detail, but I have read all the Explanatory Notes. I have taken some advice from outside parties and done my best in a short space of time to know what is being discussed. I have done my best to ensure that there are no particularly provocative matters in these orders.
	Until now, and onwards, I suspect, the legal situation regarding marriage in Northern Ireland has been different from that in England. I think that that is a pity. As I understand it, it is now coming well into line with the situation in Scotland. However, I have to declare an interest in that I have been married more than once. The issue is complicated, and made more costly and difficult to tidy up, for those who marry more than once and have to go this way and that in order to marry in a jurisdiction in Ireland, in Scotland or in England. I hasten to add that I have not done the tour. I am not being frivolous. I believe that this is a good order.
	In another place, my honourable friend David Wilshire, backed by Lady Hermon, asked a large number of leading questions. From my reading of Hansard from another place, he received pretty satisfactory answers from the Minister. I therefore believe that we should welcome this order.

Lord Shutt of Greetland: My Lords, I, too, welcome this order and the other orders. Perhaps—to take a leaf out of the book of the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran—this is something that should be said only once. These orders have been given some consideration by the devolved Assembly. Devolution means devolution, as far as I am concerned, and the content of these orders is what the Assembly wants. I hope that we return soon to real devolution. If it does not happen, we may have to second guess what the Assembly might have thought. The Assembly has done much work in discussing these orders. These are the orders that the Assembly would have passed had it been functioning. I therefore support this order.

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass: My Lords, I welcome the order. During the Second Reading of the original Bill in the Assembly, the former Minister of Finance and Personnel pointed out that the main statute on the formalities and preliminaries which must be undertaken for a marriage to take place in Northern Ireland was more than 150 years old. Having periodically been added to by subsequent legislation, it had become quite convoluted and difficult to follow. On that basis, I welcome the consolidation, modernisation and simplification brought about by this order.
	I particularly welcome the provision in Article 18 which will allow people suffering from serious injuries or terminal illness to marry in a hospice or hospital. That is a sensible and compassionate innovation. The order is intended to simplify, codify and modernise the fragmented and piecemeal legislation that has existed for many years. With that in mind, I should like to impress on the noble and learned Lord the need to provide strict and clear guidelines to district councils for setting criteria and nominating places where marriages can take place. With no fewer than 26 district councils currently in existence in Northern Ireland, there is clear potential for implementation of the legislation to be rather inconsistent from one district council to another. I support the order and look forward to hearing the Minister's comments on those issues.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, like all noble Lords, I am happy to see my noble friend Lord Maginnis back in his place after a brief absence, the reasons for which he was kind enough to inform me of. I shall take on board the points that have been raised and ensure that the appropriate officials bear them in mind.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Commissioner for Children and Young People (Northern Ireland) Order 2003

Lord Williams of Mostyn: rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 18th December 2002 be approved.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the draft order reflects a different approach in Northern Ireland, as we heard my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath say earlier. The order provides for the important new public office of a commissioner whose purpose and aim are to safeguard and promote the rights and best interests of children and young persons in Northern Ireland.
	The order provides for a four-year term of appointment, renewable once, by the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, with accountability—this is very important—by way of annual reports. However, in day-to-day operation the commissioner will rightly be independent and free to determine priorities. The draft order sets out a number of guiding principles, chief of which is a requirement that the right of the child must be the paramount consideration. But others rightly include, for example, a requirement to have regard to the role of parents.
	The draft order provides for a comprehensive and wide-ranging remit encompassing all children and young people from birth to 18, or 21 if they are disabled or care leavers, and the full spectrum of public authorities whose activities affect children and young people, including those operating in a non-devolved field such as juvenile justice agencies. The functions proposed range from the promotion of rights and best interests of children, through to advocacy and assisting and intervening in legal proceedings, to reviewing the arrangements made by authorities for handling whistle blowing and complaints, to investigating complaints himself in particular circumstances. These functions are accompanied by a range of necessary powers such as power to compel disclosure of information and powers of entry, but with safeguards against abuse built in.
	As the noble Lords, Lord Shutt, Lord Maginnis and Lord Glentoran, pointed out, the order had almost completed Committee stage. It had the full support of the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is a very important step forward. I shall not mention that to my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 18th December 2002 be approved.—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)

Lord Glentoran: My Lords, I wish that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Privy Seal would mention the matter to his noble friend Lord Hunt. However, I shall give him an out.
	Northern Ireland is a small community. Children in Northern Ireland have probably suffered more than children in other areas of the United Kingdom as a result of the awful happenings over the past 30 years: the lack of law and order; the high levels of incest and maltreatment of children in the areas dominated by the paramilitaries where the police cannot enter; and, worst of all, the loss of parents and children; the loss of access to their schools and all the awful things that we know children in Northern Ireland have had to suffer for far too long. It is an excellent move on the part of the Government to appoint a person with sole responsibility for looking after the interests of children and children's rights.
	I am delighted that the order nearly completed its passage in the Northern Ireland Assembly. I believe that the relevant amendments have been incorporated in the order. It is a great step forward for families and children in Northern Ireland.

Lord Shutt of Greetland: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, rightly told us 10 minutes ago that the commissioner must not be an ineffective token symbol. We want to see a champion for children, a strong and independent voice, doing good work in Northern Ireland. We on these Benches give our blessing to the order.

Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, I welcome the order and the order we shall discuss later on the protection of children. Having read both the orders very carefully, am I right in thinking that the powers of the commissioner could be used to protect children who are made to join paramilitary youth movements and are frequently threatened that their families will suffer if they do not do so? As I say, I have read the measure carefully and I believe that it could be used to protect children in those circumstances. However, I should be grateful if the noble and learned Lord could tell me whether I am right.

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass: My Lords, I welcome this order and I acknowledge the work that has been done by the Northern Ireland Assembly. The order is a clear indication of attempts to achieve close co-operation within and among government departments and other agencies. It is evidence that Northern Ireland can have a governmental system capable of delivering on key local issues and that there is the political potential to make the system work effectively. I hope that we shall very soon see the restoration of devolution.
	I also acknowledge the helpful contributions made to the Assembly by those from the Office of the Children's Commissioner for Wales. Although the Office of the Commissioner for Children and Young People in Northern Ireland will be somewhat different from the Welsh model, the shared experiences were extremely useful to the consultation process.
	During the debate on the Children's Commissioner in the Assembly, my colleagues in the Ulster Unionist Party expressed concerns that the powers of the commissioner to investigate authorities and recommend changes in policy, practice or law may undermine the role of, for example, the Police Service of Northern Ireland or social services departments. I therefore welcome the provisions within the order that ensure that the inspection review role of the commissioner will be over and above that of the normal channels of investigation. As I understand it, the commissioner will exercise those functions only if and when the existing provisions have failed the children involved.
	The establishment of a commissioner should not absolve the Government from responsibility for children's rights. Indeed, the main purpose of a commissioner should be to enhance how public authorities interact with children. There must be a culture of respect for children's rights that permeates every aspect of society, and a system of governance where the rights, interests and views of children and young people are second nature, not second choice.
	While the most important issue is to establish a commissioner to, above all else, defend the rights and interests of children, there is concern that a commissioner for children and young people may significantly undermine the role and responsibility of parents.
	I welcome article 6(3)(a), which provides that the commissioner has to give due regard to,
	"the importance of the role of parents in the upbringing and development of their children",
	when exercising his or her functions. Why is the phrase "role of parents" used rather than "the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents", as laid out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? Can the noble and learned Lord assure us that the order is sufficiently sensitive to the authority and the rights of parents, and that the establishment of a commissioner for children and young people will not undermine the integrity of family structures or relationships within them?
	Given the extensive powers of the commissioner to undertake research, issue guidance, conduct investigations into law and practice—that can include entry and inspection—provide information and make representations and recommendations, my party naturally expressed concerns about accountability. We are concerned that adequate democratic oversight will be applied to the commissioner and his office. We therefore welcome the provision under paragraph 12 of Schedule 2 which states that the commissioner is required to report on the carrying out of his functions at the end of every financial year and that the report shall be laid before the Assembly and the Secretary of State.
	Once again, I warmly welcome the order. Its enactment should be a significant step towards the promotion and protection of the rights of vulnerable children in particular.

Baroness Blood: My Lords, first let me declare an interest. I am a trustee on the Barnardo's council for the United Kingdom, and I also sit on the Northern Ireland advisory Barnardo's board.
	Naturally, given the previous debate, I support the order. We in Northern Ireland see it as a huge step forward in the promotion and protection of children's rights. In Northern Ireland, more than one third of the population is under 18, and that group faces many serious challenges through issues such as poverty, social exclusion and lack of representation. That is not unlike children and young people throughout the British Isles, but the children in Northern Ireland have an added difficulty living in a post-conflict society. Indeed, I fear that the legacy of that conflict will be around for some time to come. A children's commissioner is needed all over the United Kingdom, but especially in Northern Ireland.
	The order has put emphasis on direct access for children and young people to be consulted directly, and I would strongly back that. The provision must not be a "paper exercise" but one that gives children and young people a champion who has a voice at the highest levels of government.
	I will not go into all the aspects of the order. I have some concerns and questions about children in the juvenile system and asylum-seeking children. Those children and young people must also be afforded protection in line with all other children and young people in Northern Ireland under the order.
	I should, however, like to ask the noble and learned Lord about Article 15(5), which is specifically in respect of expenses from a child or young person. How would that happen? It is not clear from the order.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I am grateful for the welcome that has been given to the order, which is of course extremely important, as noble Lords have said.
	The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, is quite right to draw our attention to Article 6(3)(a). I can confirm that the role of the parents is not in contradiction to any relevant provision of the UN convention, as he correctly identified. I am happy to give him that assurance.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, asked about the commissioner's possible involvement where children might be coerced—I think that I paraphrase fairly—into inappropriate paramilitary organisations. The commissioner could indeed have a role in that context. I shall trace the various origins of that role, first by examining Article 6. It states:
	"The principal aim of the Commissioner in exercising his functions under this Order is to safeguard and promote the rights and best interests of children and young persons".
	Article 7(2) importantly states:
	"The Commissioner shall keep under review the adequacy and effectiveness of law and practice relating to the rights and welfare of children and young persons".
	Article 7(4) also appears to be relevant. It states:
	"The Commissioner shall advise the Secretary of State, the Executive Committee of the Assembly and a relevant authority on matters concerning the rights or best interests of children and young persons",
	if that were a problem in a locality.
	I draw the attention of noble Lords to Article 8(1), which I need not quote because it speaks for itself. Article 8(3) states:
	"The Commissioner may, for the purposes of any of his functions, conduct such investigations as he considers necessary or expedient".
	A wide spectrum of power and sources of authority is available to the commissioner when he or she is appointed.
	I turn to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Blood. There is the possibility of the recovery of costs but I assure the noble Baroness that that would be pursued only if the commissioner thought it reasonable. In my judgment, that is going to be a rare occurrence, but the provision is there in case.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Audit and Accountability (Northern Ireland) Order 2003

Lord Williams of Mostyn: rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 19th December 2002 be approved.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the main purpose of the order is to enhance and extend the powers of the Comptroller and Auditor General for Northern Ireland and to reorganise public audit of the health service and local government there. The order introduces three main measures. First, the Comptroller and Auditor General is made auditor of health service bodies in Northern Ireland, and those engaged in local government audit are transferred to the employment of the Northern Ireland Audit Office. Secondly, the Comptroller and Auditor General is given power to access documents from third parties relating to statutory audits or value for money studies of public bodies. Thirdly, the Comptroller and Auditor General is made statutory auditor of a number of executive NDPBs of which he was not formerly the auditor.
	There was extensive public consultation in Northern Ireland. The results indicate support for the proposals. The provisions were the policy of the Northern Ireland Executive. Prior to suspension—this echoes what was said earlier—the former Audit and Accountability (Northern Ireland) Bill had passed the second stage of its passage through the Assembly. The Bill received a unanimous welcome from all speakers in that debate, including the chairmen of the Finance and Personnel Committee and the Audit Committee. The chairman of the Audit Committee spoke also in his capacity as a member of the Public Accounts Committee. Those committees had already had opportunity to have input into the proposals, and had done so.
	The order's provisions generally are largely in line with the United Kingdom Government's response to the recommendations of the Sharman report. Where it differs marginally from those provisions, it does so only to reflect the concerns of the Northern Ireland Executive, Members of the Assembly and its committees. The provisions will enhance the key principle of the independence of public audit. I commend the order to the House.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 19th December 2002 be approved.—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)

Lord Glentoran: My Lords, in welcoming the order, I shall quote the comments that David Trimble made in Committee in another place. He said:
	"We maintained greater per capita expenditure on health in Northern Ireland than that in England and Wales . . . Unfortunately, although expenditure is higher in Northern Ireland, output is poorer. We have longer waiting lists and are not achieving the same level of health care as in England and Wales".
	I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Privy Seal will not tell that to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Mr Trimble goes on:
	"Consequently, I welcome the extension of the powers to increase the effectiveness and the efficiency of the audit in order to give us better tools to improve performance".—[Official Report, Commons Second Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation, 29/1/03; col. 11.]
	If that is what audit is about, the best tools that we can have are welcome.

Lord Shutt of Greetland: My Lords, I support the order. My noble friend Lord Sharman is behind it. He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, as I am. Therefore, it must be right. Clearly it is important that we have up to date audit and accountancy in Northern Ireland and I am happy to support the order.

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass: My Lords, my party welcomes the order. We regret that something as important as this and the other orders have to complete their stages through Orders in Council rather than by Bills.
	The order is a response to the Sharman review and has clearly been tailored to meet those circumstances peculiar to Northern Ireland. It extends the powers of the Comptroller and Auditor General, bringing new bodies within his remit. In particular, echoing what the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, has said, we welcome the provision for all National Health Service bodies to come within the Comptroller and Auditor General's bailiwick. That is patently sensible, given the substantially increased amount of public money going into the health service.
	The noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, indicated that there is greater per capita expenditure on health in Northern Ireland than there is in England and Wales, although we still lag behind Scotland. Unfortunately, however, the output is, as David Trimble indicated, significantly poorer, with longer waiting lists and patients not receiving comparable health care to that available in Great Britain.
	One questions why, with extra money being ploughed into the health service, we are not seeing a substantial increase in the quality of services. That is not be interpreted as criticism of all those who work in the health service. Those at the coal face are aware of the structural problems that need to be addressed. A more efficient and effective audit is but one measure that may begin to ensure that money is better spent.
	I welcome the inclusion of some 13 non-departmental public bodies within the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General's audit. The largest of those, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive with its substantial annual expenditure of around £750 million or £760 million, has long been the victim of protection racketeers. Between the Comptroller and Auditor General and the new Criminal Assets Bureau one would look forward to meaningful changes affecting both the housing executive and other such agencies.
	The power to obtain information is important in so far as it will now take the audit beyond the public sector and into the private and semi-private sectors. Strengthening the Comptroller and Auditor General's powers is therefore vital to the long-term rehabilitation of our society. I welcome the order and look forward to the Minister's response.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, notwithstanding the previous convictions of the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, I commend the order to the House.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Health and Personal Social Services (Quality, Improvement and Regulation) (Northern Ireland) Order 2003

Lord Williams of Mostyn: rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 7th January be approved.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the main purpose, which chimes with what the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, Mr Trimble, and the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, said earlier, is to introduce measures to secure and to improve the quality of health and social care services delivered by the health and personal social services and by the independent sector in Northern Ireland. There was detailed public consultation which began in April 2001. It was gratifying to find widespread support for the introduction of these new arrangements in Northern Ireland.
	The proposals to introduce the new arrangements and to bring forward legislation were approved by the Executive in May 2002. It was being considered as a Bill in the Assembly; it had passed Second Reading and had just entered Committee stage when devolution was suspended. Following the decision to bring forward the Bill as an order, the draft order was subject to a short period of consultation in November and December of last year. Those who responded confirmed their continuing support for the legislation.
	The proposal will give protection to service users with regard to quality of health and social care; it will remove unacceptable variations in the standards of health and care delivered; and it will reduce the risk of abuse of, or harm to, service users. Those who live in England, Scotland and Wales have had those protections for some time and it is only right, just and appropriate that those who live in Northern Ireland should have the same protections. I commend the order to the House.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 7th January be approved.—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)

Lord Glentoran: My Lords, I have a brief from the British Medical Association. I want to reiterate some of its points. The BMA (Northern Ireland) notes and asks why the order does not appear to provide for the authority to assess value for money in the same way that the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection will in England and Wales.
	The BMA (NI) considers that the authority, as an independent body, should be subject to a statutory obligation to submit its annual report to the Northern Ireland Assembly. It suggests that that would enable the Assembly to scrutinise the work of the authority.
	As regards GPs' surgeries, the BMI (NI) asks whether GPs providing NHS services from their premises where private work may also be undertaken will need to register with the new authority.
	Regarding personal care, which is dealt with in Articles 10 and 11 of the order, the BMI (NI) seeks assurances that the department will discuss these matters with organisations representing patients, carers, health and social care professionals.
	Basically, there is considerable support for the order by the BMA (NI). On minimum standards of improvement, it comments that it would appear that a breach of an improvement notice does not in itself constitute an offence and that it would press for some examples of how the department envisages that a breach of the standards would be addressed.
	Lastly, I deal with restrictions on disclosure of information. The BMA (NI) suggests that a code of practice setting out the circumstances in which disclosure without consent would be acceptable.
	I apologise for reading the brief, but when I received it the points seemed pertinent and worth making to the Minister. Otherwise, I support the order.

Lord Shutt of Greetland: My Lords, I support the order. The Bill was called the Health and Personal Social Services Bill. One is tempted to suggest that it would have been an opportunity to look at the whole business of free personal care. However, that is perhaps a debate for another day. The devolved Assembly went so far, and perhaps it will return to the matter.

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass: My Lords, I welcome this order. In the light of some awful cases that have been in the public eye over the past few years—Harold Shipman or the Bristol Royal Infirmary, for example—there is a need to underpin best practice within the health service.
	I welcome the provision for an all-encompassing regulatory authority to monitor the provision and quality of services and to specify necessary improvements. Monitoring of establishments and agencies has, until now, been less than satisfactory. Now standards of care will be regulated and residential homes will have to provide a basic standard of care.
	Can the Minister tell us, however, how those standards will be set and how they will be enforced? Will there be a timeframe for meeting those standards and will they be checked on a regular basis? Can he assure us that they will be achievable and sustainable; and that they will be open and transparent?
	I welcome the provision for the regulation and improvement authority to report annually. It is however, not unreasonable to assume that there will be occasions when the public, the department and service providers will need to be made aware of findings on an ongoing basis. What mechanisms will be in place and resources available to ensure that the regulation and improvement authority is able to fulfil that requirement?
	Registration of care homes is comparatively easy to achieve, but there appears to be a lack of provision to ensure registration of self-employed childminders. It is unclear how parents and guardians can be certain that a childminder is registered. A home will be required to display a certificate. Will childminders do likewise? Will members of the public be able to gain access to a list of registered individuals and agencies? Will they be able to discover those who have had their registration withdrawn? Can the Minister assure us that, like homes and agencies, unregistered childminders will face fines and convictions? Can he reassure me that registration will not be effected on a one-off basis, but renewed annually, and that standards will be continually assessed and updated?
	I welcome the provision for improvement notices. What is unclear is whether there will be a time limit attached to those notices. Will registration be cancelled if improvements are not made within the stipulated time? Will the improvement notices be available to the persons using the services? Surely they have rights in this respect.
	Finally, although I welcome the commitment to improve quality, there appears to be no reference to the costs involved. The Ulster Unionist Party is concerned that huge amounts of money are being swallowed up without visible returns in terms of quality. The regulation and improvement agency will clearly require considerable support staff and sufficient finance to be able to fulfil its responsibility. I understand that it will be financed from the health budget. Does that not mean a further erosion of resources at the sharp end?
	Quality is essential in our health service. It cannot be achieved in a stop/start manner. Standards should be applied regularly and in response to needs. I welcome the order and look forward to hearing the Minister's response.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I am grateful for the general welcome for the order. The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, asked many detailed questions. If it is of assistance for similar future occasions, I am more than happy for such questions to be put to me in advance so that I can give a fully researched and authoritative answer. I know that the noble Lord will be patient with me if I promise to write to him about some of the fine detail because I would not want inadvertently to give a misleading impression.
	The noble Lord asked about childminders. Childminders and the regulation of services to under-12s will continue to be within the remit of the trusts. Standards will be developed in conjunction with all stakeholders, including service users and providers. To answer his question about time, some standards will be phased in. To answer his question about review, yes, standards will be subject to continuous review.
	I may able to deal with all of the noble Lord's questions; if not, I shall research Hansard and remedy the defects. He is right: improvement notices will state what action is required. To his specific question, "By what date?", the answer is yes—in other words, the date is specified in the order.
	The noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, asked about GP surgeries. They will not need to register. On value for money, the full range of audit functions, including value for money work, will be introduced to the scheme. The noble Lord also asked about annual reports, which we find in Article 7, which includes the obligation to make a report to the department as soon as possible at the end of each financial year.
	Questions were posed about enforcement and how offences were to be prosecuted. We find the answers in Article 24 and following articles. Article 24, at page 17, deals with failure to comply with conditions. Contravention of regulations is dealt with in Article 25; false descriptions of establishments and agencies in Article 27; and failure to display certificate of registration in Article 28, which in part deals with one of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis. Details relating to proceedings for offences—the compendious answer to the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran—are set out in Article 29. It says:
	"Proceedings . . . shall not, without the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland be taken by any person other than the Regulation and Improvement Authority".
	There is a fairly self-contained code in that section under the overall rubric of "Offences".
	I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis of Drumglass, that there ought to be consultation and conversation with affected organisations. I have no doubt that appropriate consultation will take place. The noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, asked about the regulation and improvement authority. One of the authority's functions relevant to the noble Lord's question is set out at Article 35(1)(c).
	I repeat that I am conscious of the fact that both noble Lords asked detailed questions. I am inclined to the view that I have not answered all of them. I shall check carefully, as I said, and I shall write to both noble Lords. As always, I shall copy that letter not only to the Library but to all noble Lords who have shown an interest in our continuing work in this context.

Lord Glentoran: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for that reply. I apologise for firing late questions at him. As the noble and learned Lord knows better than anybody, we are moving on to our 14th order this week or something like that. It has not been easy to get ahead of oneself.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I accept that entirely. Sometimes, the briefing comes in late. I say simply that, if your Lordships want to give me advance notice, I may be able to provide a more satisfactory or, at least, more immediate service.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (Northern Ireland) Order 2003

Lord Williams of Mostyn: rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 7th January be approved.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I beg to move the approval of the order. It is another extremely important order, as its title implies. The order introduces provisions broadly in line with the Protection of Children Act 1999, Part II of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 and Part VII of the Care Standards Act 2000. The story is similar to that of the previous order, in that the provisions reflect those introduced in a Bill that had passed Second Stage in the Northern Ireland Assembly with a high level of general support.
	Childcare organisations will have to carry out checks on prospective employees in childcare positions. The checks will be carried out with reference to a new statutory list of those deemed unsuitable to work with children that will be maintained by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety. Childcare organisations will be required to make referrals to the list if an individual has been dismissed or otherwise been removed from a childcare position on the grounds that he has harmed a child or placed a child at risk of harm. Similar provisions are made with regard to work with vulnerable adults. Those duties are imposed on providers of services for vulnerable adults.
	It will be an offence for an individual to work in a childcare position while on the list. There is similar provision vis-a-vis vulnerable adults. In the case of work with children, it will be a further offence to work or seek work in a childcare position while on a list of those prohibited from working in education-related employment held by the Department of Education or while subject to a disqualification order made by a court. It will also be an offence for listed individuals to seek work in a childcare position and for an employer to offer work in a regulated position to such a person. Again, there is similar provision for work with vulnerable adults.
	We have rightly been concerned with the welfare and care of children; we have not perhaps paid the same attention to vulnerable adults who require the protection of the law. I commend the order to the House.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 7th January be approved.—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)

Lord Glentoran: My Lords, while welcoming the order, I shall make a few points arising from briefing from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and from the brief from officials for the scrutiny carried out by the Assembly before Stormont was prorogued.
	The order refers at some length to Part V of the Police Act 1997 with regard to how the Act applies to Northern Ireland. Reading Hansard from another place, I do not consider that the Minister gave a positive answer as to when Part 5 of the Police Act 1997 would be introduced into Northern Ireland. As regards this order, it seems the sooner the better. I should be grateful to the noble and learned Lord if he would respond.
	My next point concerns cross-border vetting arrangements. We are setting very high standards. Indeed, in the Bill the enforcement will be stronger in Northern Ireland than it is currently in England and Wales. The standards and organisation for listing paedophiles and likely people who should not be allowed to manage children in any way are now becoming very sound in the United Kingdom. However, we have the Republic next door and it does not have anything similar. Will the Minister ask his colleagues to put pressure on the Republic of Ireland in this respect when they have an opportunity. I am sure that there are a number of opportunities with cross-border bodies. It is a point worth making. We are leading in these measures, probably in Europe, but if we are going to lead, let us ensure that the others are on the bandwagon with us.
	There is a question concerning cross-jurisdictional issues within the kingdom. The NSPCC believes that the Government have been slow to recognise the need for co-ordination between the agencies in the various principalities in England where they are different. There is the three bureau implementation group which has been set up recently, but it would be helpful to know whether the implementation group will become an established feature of inter-jurisdictional arrangements.
	Those are three important points. I should like to hear the comments of the Minister. At the same time, I support the order.

Lord Shutt of Greetland: My Lords, I support the order which is clearly very important. The noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, referred to cross-border vetting arrangements. I believe that it is a matter of cross-many-borders and the position of other European Union states. It is important that the order is relevant to all who seek to work with children and adults with learning difficulties in Northern Ireland.

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass: My Lords, I should first like to thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Privy Seal for his response to the previous order and the points that I raised. I am grateful.
	I welcome this order and beg your Lordships' indulgence that I speak at slightly greater length than I have on previous orders. It is a complex and sensitive issue, and of huge importance. Children and vulnerable adults continue to be abused in our society. Daily we read and hear of abductions, murders and abuse. Current police investigations into child pornography on the Internet illustrate the need to ensure that statutory and voluntary arrangements for protecting children are as robust and comprehensive as possible.
	The Ulster Unionist Party welcomes the provision of checks to identify those on police lists who are considered unsuitable to work with children and vulnerable adults. I endorse and re-emphasise the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran. It is both disappointing and surprising to read that Part 5 of the Police Act 1997 is not extended to Northern Ireland. It would provide access to information about certain types of criminal record and would ensure disclosure of enhanced criminal record certificates and relevant non-conviction information.
	I want to press the Minister as to why Part 5 has not so far been extended to Northern Ireland. What is the Government's position on this matter? Will the department be able to access "soft police intelligence" in addition to criminal records, as would be possible under Part 5? I do not think that I am paranoid, but I need to be reassured that narrow tribal and sectarian considerations are not dictating policy, as I consider that they did in the recent Northern Ireland Police Bill.
	Is there not a gap in the provision of the order relating to the arrangement for background checks on persons serving or having served in the Armed Forces and their families? Could a gap occur if a soldier serving overseas is tried but not convicted by court martial of an offence against the child? Would any records and any soft intelligence be passed back to the United Kingdom? Will the department be able to access background details of Armed Forces personnel and their families? If so, how?
	We welcome the provision under Article 19 to enable any person associated with a childcare organisation to report a failure by his organisation or another childcare organisation to comply with the requirements under Articles 4 and 17. However, can the Minister clarify what is meant by "associated with"? Does that refer solely to someone who works for the organisation or does it extend to a parent or carer?
	Furthermore, can the noble and learned Lord indicate the Government's position with regard to anonymity for whistleblowers? Anonymity for whistleblowers does not appear to extend to the protection of vulnerable adults. Are the Government making a distinction between the protection of vulnerable adults compared to children? Can the Minister assure me that the same provisions will apply to both?
	The order requires that an individual must be given a sentence of at least one year before a disqualification order can be made. Surely a disqualification order should not be dependent on the length of sentence but, rather, that any conviction imposed by a court should be sufficient. I also have concerns regarding the apparent potential for those awaiting an appeal to continue working with children until their cases are heard. Again, the disqualification does not seem to extend to abuse of vulnerable adults.
	Regarding the provision for non-childcare organisations such as scout troops and sports and leisure clubs to be accredited by the department, can the Minister give an indication of what financial support will be made available to assist with the development? How will such organisations be assisted? How will the added burden on voluntary youth leaders not become a deterrent? Does he agree that there must be balance and sensitivity?
	The order introduces a fee in respect of pre-employment checks. I am concerned that such a fee will actually prove to be a disincentive to organisations adequately to vet applications or to move in the direction of accreditation. I understand that the Scottish Executive and the Home Office waive fees for organisations which rely on volunteers. Surely that same practice has to be applied to Northern Ireland.
	One final point which has been covered by the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran. It dealt with the extraterritorial problems. Perhaps I may add to his comments that the provision should be applied not only to the Republic but to other European countries.
	Despite my many concerns, I believe that the order is to be welcomed.

Lord Eames: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Williams, will remember that a few days ago in Grand Committee we discussed the housing problems in Northern Ireland. I then took the opportunity to pay tribute to him for the sensitivity and the care with which he has taken on this no doubt unwelcome burden of dealing with many issues from Northern Ireland in the absence of devolution. I gladly repeat that tribute in the Chamber today.
	I also want to repeat the emphasis of the order on housing. It illustrates the fact that many of the orders we are debating today overlap. They cover a wide range of consequent and similar concerns. This one on children and vulnerable adults is another example.
	The trouble with speaking at the tail-end of a debate, when all the official spokespersons have had their say, is that you can tick off one by one the points that you were going to make as everyone else is making them. Having listened professionally to sermons of varying lengths, I can assure the Lord Privy Seal I shall not do that tonight. However, if he will bear with me for a short time, I wish to draw his attention to two aspects of the order based on my experience and responsibilities in Northern Ireland.
	My first point, as my noble friend Lord Maginnis reminded us, has been referred to already by the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran—that is, the question of the scope of accreditation. We do not need to be reminded that in the voluntary sector there are many organisations which are not principally classified as childcaring organisations but which are actively involved with young people—scouting, the Boys Brigade and a long list of other organisations, not least youth organisations run by the Churches.
	If there is to be an opportunity, a door opened, for these organisations to become accredited, there will of course, as the order states, be a balanced responsibility. I welcome that. My own Church, the Church of Ireland, has for some time operated the Safeguarding Trust policy. This has been widely welcomed and is reflected in many of the other Churches.
	I was dismayed when I read Hansard of another place that when the appropriate Minister, Mr Browne, was asked about certain aspects and the breadth of accreditation, he used words which need to be underlined in this Chamber. Can the Lord Privy Seal help me to understand them? Referring to the question that all childcare organisations should be required to carry out checks by law, he stated, "We felt that such a requirement could not be satisfactorily enforced". I ask, quite simply, why not?
	If the door is being opened—and I welcome that very much from the voluntary sector—can we not go the second mile? The encouragement to back up the opportunity given by the order would surely be enhanced by the fact that there would be financial support and help on that aspect.
	Secondly, I underline what my noble friend Lord Maginnis and the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, have said about the cross-border problem. I am privileged to be the Primate of an all-Ireland Church. There are many opportunities for employment, I know, through crossing the border—this is growing in a European sense also—and I urge the Minister to bring to the notice, perhaps through the cross-border organisations that exist, of his colleagues in the Republic of Ireland that there is a serious discrepancy between the standards required on both sides of the border, particularly when the order takes effect. Perhaps he will share our anxieties with his colleagues in that other jurisdiction.
	From my perspective, and speaking on behalf of many of my colleagues, I greatly welcome the order.

Baroness Blood: My Lords, it is not very often that I have an opportunity to follow an Archbishop.
	Perhaps I may make a few brief points. Many of the matters to which I wished to refer have been spoken to already. I welcome the order but, like most of my colleagues, I have a few questions. The order is based mainly on the Westminster Protection of Children Act 1999 and the Care Standards Act 2000. While the order itself contains a number of unique provisions as a result of concerns already raised in consultation—indeed, the order seeks to deal with some of the flaws in the Protection of Children Act 1999 in relation to vetting, non-childcare organisations and whistle-blowing—the original Bill was only part-way through its committee stage at the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
	Many MLAs and children's organisations such as Barnado's and the NSPCC have welcomed the main thrust of the Bill. But a major issue came to light during its passage. The noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, and my noble friend Lord Maginnis have already raised the issue of the non-implementation of Part 5 of the Police Act. This was taken up in another place by Northern Ireland MPs. Some clarification was given on a number of important policy issues. The Minister indicated that his officials would look at the implications of implementing Part 5. Like my colleagues, I should like to know why and when.
	Do the Government agree that the PECS Awareness Group is an excellent example of an inter-agency, multi-professional safeguarding initiative? Will the noble and learned Lord confirm its future role and operation?
	This is quite a complicated order, bearing in mind that we are making decisions about children and vulnerable adults.
	Finally, I should like to place on record, along with the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, a very warm tribute to the noble and learned, Lord Williams of Mostyn, for his patience and sensitivity in dealing with issues pertaining to Northern Ireland.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. In Grand Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Clifton, was uncharacteristically in error. The correct description of Lord Eames, is "the noble and right reverend Lord"—which is to be found on page 63 of the Companion.
	Some very serious and challenging questions have been raised. Looking back, perhaps we ought to have agreed—the request was not made and I am not complaining—that the order should be taken in Grand Committee. Then, all of these pertinent and searching questions could have received a more appropriate response than I shall even attempt. In a sense, this is because the order is a step forward, and is not likely to be the final step in this particular context.
	Some answers I can give. The noble Baroness, Lady Blood, referred to the PECS Awareness Group. It has produced a publication entitled Safer Organisations Safer Children. It includes representatives of the statutory and voluntary sectors. I confirm that it has worked well. We anticipate—I hope that this is a comfort to the noble Baroness—that it will have a continuing important role to play in raising public awareness.
	The accreditation scheme is designed to promote good child protection procedures. The noble and right reverend Lord asked about funding. Most organisations will already have good child protection procedures. Funding is provided to the project, Our Duty to Care, which offers training and support to organisations in the voluntary and community sectors. Consideration will be given to what further support may be necessary.
	I am not happy that the material I have is sufficiently focused to provide appropriately reasoned answers to all the questions raised. I want to reflect on some of them, if your Lordships will allow me to do so.
	A number of speakers referred to Part 5 of the Police Act. I know that my honourable friend, Mr Browne, the Minister with responsibility for health, social services and public safety, intends to discuss that issue with my honourable friend Jane Kennedy, who has responsibility in that area. I undertake personally to be in contact with Mr Browne—who is always responsive to requests from your Lordships, as we discovered when we were dealing with the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Bill—to see what can be done. It will take a little while for me to be able to write, but I undertake to do so.
	The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, asked about armed services personnel. Checks will be possible through collaborative arrangements with the other United Kingdom jurisdictions. I want to ponder his question about vulnerable adults—again, a serious question—as I do his question about whistle-blowing arrangements.
	The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, asked why a sentence of 12 months or more should be required as a pre-condition for a disqualification order. A disqualification order will result in a ban from employment for substantial periods—possibly for life. It was considered necessary to reflect that in the sentence imposed by the court. In other words, the court must consider the case to be sufficiently serious to warrant the imposition of a disqualification order.
	Other questions were raised about whistle-blowers on which, again, I want to reflect. The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, asked about soft police intelligence. Under current arrangements, the police service can provide soft police intelligence.
	The noble Lords, Lord Maginnis and Lord Glentoran, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, asked about cross-border issues. An important aspect of the implementation of the order will be co-operation between all jurisdictions to protect against individuals moving across borders. There is already the Three Bureaux Implementation Group, which comprises representatives of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is intended to facilitate the exchange of information between all jurisdictions. We anticipate the continuation of that collaborative approach.
	I wish to give a further answer on the Irish Republic. I have mislaid the appropriate notes, but I can recite it from memory. At present, the Garda is carrying out work with a view to improving its practices. The North/South Ministerial Council may provide a useful avenue for that.
	I undertake to collate all the necessary material and respond in writing to all noble Lords' questions within a fortnight—I think that that is reasonable. If detailed answers are not forthcoming, it is because the issues might need further consideration. I hope that noble Lords find that period reasonable. At least a dozen serious questions were raised. I shall provide answers on the basis that I indicated. We should have put our minds to Grand Committee on this matter. If noble Lords do not think it unhelpful, if I could have notice of the questions, we could discuss matters with officials. I repeat that I offer briefings with officials before any Grand Committee. This is a good order. I am not saying that my explanation of it is perfect. I am conscious that it is not. For the moment, I beg to move.

On Question, Motion agreed to.
	House adjourned at seven minutes past nine o'clock.